Tissue Paper Earth (with modifications)

Here's a fun and easy craft for Earth Day that you can do with your little one. It comes with a really cute poem from SomewhatSimple.com. Go ahead and grab the page and then check down below to see what I came up with to help your child be as successful at this activity as possible, while also growing and developing along the way.

Happy Earth Day Poem

MODIFICATIONS: One of the trickiest parts of this activity is getting your kiddo to keep those tissue paper squares inside the Earth circle. So, here's the thing - I have thought and thought about this and I keep coming back to the same issue. Saying within the lines here is hard. That circle is going to start to get covered up by the tissue paper and then all bets are off, as it is. That pretty much rules out using a marker to highlight the circle - you won't be able to see that when it's covered up, either. I do think that there is benefit to having the child glue tissue paper around the circle first, right on the line. While this might help create that border in the child's mind, however, it might also be very boring and turn your little one off from this activity much more quickly. You can draw a happy face on the inside of the circle and a sad face on the outside of the circle and explain to your child why each face is feeling the way that it is in relation to where you should glue things. And then I thought that, maybe this isn't the right activity to be worrying about staying in those lines. Maybe it is too tough at this point and, what a child needs is to be able to complete the craft, from start to finish, successfully, getting to look at the final product that, in fact, looks as it should. Eureka! Print out 2 copies of the paper. Cut the circle out of one of them. Give your child that circle and only that circle to glue the tissue paper onto. When that part of the activity is complete, produce the second page and have your child glue their circle right onto the circle on the new page. There you have it! A great looking craft, while doing an end run around the trickiest part. However, it still gives your little one that, "staying within the lines" feel and some basic practice at it, believe it or not. Just, practice that he can be successful at right now.