Happy Sea Turtles

Here’s a happy little project for preschoolers.  This kept my three-year-old busy for only about ten minutes but that of course depends on the day.  The four and five year-olds were occupied for upwards of 30 minutes with all the cutting and gluing and coloring.  Here is the turtle template which could also be used as a coloring sheet. (I used a picture from this site to make the template, the first hit on google for sea turtle.  By the way, an older gentleman asked me the other day if I had Google – cracked me up!)

I printed out the same drawing onto colored sheets of paper.  (You can print on lots of different kinds of papers including paper shopping bags in a laser printer if you only trim them to the correct size first.)

I tried to use only complementary colored paper, crayons and sparkle glue.  A few other colors joined us accidentally.  In the end my five-year-old insisted on cutting out her entire turtle and pasting it on a neon orange background which actually looked quite stunning.

We had made these color wheels together a while back and they have been very useful visuals for reference.  At the time we made them I helped with cutting and gluing and actually did the entire project for my then two-year-old.  I think I let her stick the shapes down on the background circle.  The kids each have a sketchbook with a pocket page in the front and they keep these color wheels in this front pocket.

I used a regular white sheet of printing paper but I would suggest a heavier back piece for this project.  As you can see, my children cut out large areas to glue down but this could b a much more elaborate project for older children if much smaller pieces were used.  Tiny colored pieces of paper would look stunning on a black background.