Coffee Filter Fall Flower Craft

The early morning frost has taken it's toll on the sunflowers, and this weekend we decided it was time to cut them down. To make up for the lack of available flowers, the children crafted a few from coffee filters for me, instead.

They used fall colored (orange, red, yellow, brown, and green) washable markers, to color the coffee filters. The younger children are usually banned from markers in our house, so they were quite excited to get to use them. The markers bled straight through the filters, so we placed paper underneath to protect the table.

When they were done coloring, we wet the filters down with water, using a squirt bottle. The colors blended, and spread across the wet filters.

Even a little bit of scribbling, expanded to cover the entire wet filter, so everyone, including our one year old guest, could participate. And, watching the colors mix together was enough fun, that the older children joined in too, giving this craft a pretty wide range of appeal.

The filters dried after a couple hours, and we turned them into flowers with the addition of a few pipe cleaners. For each flower, we cut about two inches off of the end of one pipe cleaner.

We poked what was left, through the center of the filter, so about an inch stuck through to the right side.

We gathered the filter, over the inch of pipe cleaner, sticking through, and secured it in place with the two inch piece we'd cut off earlier.

Gripping the filter around the center, we fluffed the edge back out, to form the flower.

Finally, we rolled the bit that was sticking through, down into the center of the flower.

When all of the flowers were finished, we arranged them in the little ones' fall vase. They look quite pretty in the center of the table, and are not nearly as messy as the sunflowers - though, we will miss all that paint producing pollen.

It's great to be a homeschooler.