Coffee Filter Poinsettia Wreath

This week, I'm hoping to do a short literary unit, with the children, on legends. Legends are stories passed down through history, or even myths made up in more recent times, that are often taken for historical fact. The Christmas season abounds with these stories, such as the Mexican legend of the first poinsettia.

Our favorite picture book retelling of this legend, is Tomie dePaola's The Legend of the Poinsettia. If you can't locate a copy though, you can find several versions of the the legend, as well as a couple of craft ideas at Just 4 Kids Magazine.

I had our own craft in mind, though. After seeing all the fun they've been having over at Frugal Family Fun Blog with coffee filters, I decided our next craft would have to be coffee filter based.

So, I gave the younger girls twelve coffee filters. They colored six of them green, and six red, by scribbling across them, with water soluble markers (it's a good idea to have scrap paper underneath).

Then, they sprayed them with water. As you can see, some of the older kids decided to join in the fun. A couple of the filters were sprayed so much, in fact, that almost all of the color was washed away.

So, we had to color them a little more, by brushing the markers over the wet surface.

While they dried, I set C (age 4) to work, painting a cereal box, cardboard hoop, with green glitter paint. To make the hoop we traced around a dinner plate for the outer circle, and a salad plate for the inner circle.

When everything was dry, we folded the coffee filters in half...

...then fourths....

...then eighths, for the green filters...

...and on into sixteenths for the reds.

I drew a half leaf shape against the folded edge, starting at the edge near the top, but not returning all the way to the folded edge at the bottom.

The girls cut them out...

...and unfolded them, to find flowers, and leaves.

And, as a bonus, the girls discovered the left over bits unfolded to make very nice crowns.

We centered the red (or pink, as it looked when it was dry) flower over the green leaves. Then, centered both pieces over holes I punched in the cardboard hoop, with a hole punch. The girls fastened the flowers to the hoop, by pushing paper fasteners through the flowers, and the holes, and opening them on the back.

Finally, we added a couple of extra holes at the top of the hoop, to tie a ribbon through for hanging.

It's great to be a homeschooler.