DLTK's Educational Activities for Kids
Daffodil Egg Carton Craft

Children under 4 can easily paint the cup for the daffodil, but the rest pretty much needs a child who's age 4 and up.

This is a great craft to do with the Mary, Mary Quite Contrary nursery rhyme, but it's also a nice spring craft.

Personally, my favorite use for it is as a bouquet of crafted daffodils in a hand decorated jar served with breakfast in bed (to me!) on Mother's Day *grin*.

Suggestion from Lisa:
"For the daffodil craft for younger children they could use a green straw taped to the flower instead of rolling up the paper for the stem!"

Materials you will need for the daffodil are

• an egg carton cup.  Cardboard works far better as poster paint won't stick to the styrofoam.  If you're using styrofoam, just leave the cup white.
   
• Yellow paint (if you chose to paint the cup)
   
• glue or tape
   
• green construction paper
   
• printer and white paper
   
• CARDBOARD altERNATIVE:  
  • this is the alternative that we used.
  • instead of printing out the color Templates, print out the black and white template and trace it onto a piece of cardboard.
  • Let the children use this cardboard template to trace the shapes onto colored construction paper.
     

Instructions:

• Print out the template of choice and cut out the template pieces (at this point you can use the cardboard alternative if you desire.
   
• Color or paint the template pieces as required.
   
• Take a whole sheet of construction paper and roll it as tight as you can into a tube 
  • the kids won't be able to roll it too tightly...  That's ok, just have them do it as tight as they are able.
  • Oh, the look of concentration you'll see during this step... you'd think they were performing brain surgery!
     
• Glue or tape the construction paper so it stays as a tube.  We found that tape worked better.
   
• Flatten and tape the end of the end of the tube so you have a surface to attach your flower to.
• Cut a single egg carton cup from the egg carton.  Trim the edges so they aren't jagged.
   
• Paint the egg carton cup yellow.
   
• Paint the inside too!

• Glue the petals to the flattened part of the green tube
   
• Glue the egg carton cup to the center of the petals
   
• Glue the leaves onto the tube toward the bottom of the "stem"  (if you'll be making a jar full of these as a bouquet, you'll want to put the leaves a bit higher up the stem).
   

Template for colour printer

Template for black and white printer

Print friendly version of these instructions