What’s autumn without a little scarecrow fun for little people? J has been really excited to see all the small store bought scarecrows in people’s yards recently, so we decided to make our own paper scarecrow to decorate the play/school room.
My main goal with this project was to give him a little independence while still practicing the preschool skills we’ve been working on. I let him do the cutting, the drawing, and the placement of the “hair” (as you may have guessed by the photo), but I made the main scarecrow body so it would still look semi-scarecrow-ish by the time we were finished. Depending on your child’s age, you could pick and choose which aspects you felt most important to give your child the freedom to do.
1) Get everything ready. My prep work involved making the body. This was fairly simple. I used 2 pieces of blue construction paper, one left whole, and one cut in half to make two legs. Then I cut a piece of brown construction paper in half to make two shirt sleeves. Finally, I cut a circle of paper for the head.
2) Have your child draw the scarecrow’s face:
2) Have your child cut strips of “straw” and glue them onto the head (for hair), sleeves, and pants (for hands and feet) as desired.
(Do you like the multitude of face parts and the minimalist hair? 🙂 )
3) Next, we made a “patchwork” letter S on our scarecrow’s overalls. I wrote the letter S in school glue and had J place paper scraps along the glue to form the letter.
(Note also that our scarecrow’s hairstyle got a little emo-style, side-swept bang drama since the last picture…)
4) I let J decorate the scarecrow’s overalls by practicing writing “S” freehand where ever he liked. You can see the one I helped him with vs. the ones I let him do himself- most of them ended up backwards, but it was good practice nonetheless. Here’s our overall front:
Overall, a fun, simple project to do that offered a lot of fine motor skills, writing practice, and independence for J. Hope you have fun making yours! What’s your favorite scarecrow project for fall?
