Rainy Day Umbrella Craft
April showers bring May flowers! It’s been a rainy week around here, which inspired me to create this Rainy Day Umbrella Craft with my little ones.
If you’re looking for a fun activity to celebrate spring weather or you are looking for a way to keep your little one busy, this raindrop and umbrella craft is perfect! It is a great sensory experience and you’ll end up with a colorful art project!
I love using shaving cream in kid activities, so we decided to use it to make this umbrella swirled with colors! If you want an extension of this activity, use the leftover shaving cream for a sensory play experience!
Materials for Umbrella Craft
- shaving cream
- food coloring
- baking sheet
- butter or plastic knife
- card stock paper
- scissors
- glue
- black paper
- Umbrella Template
- Raindrops Template
Umbrella Craft Directions
To make the swirled paper, you will need shaving cream! Yes, you read that right…shaving cream! This is a unique material that makes this craft really stand out.
To start, spray shaving cream onto a baking sheet.
Then drop food coloring around the shaving cream.
Use a butter knife or something similar to swirl the colors around.
Next, place a piece of card stock paper on top of the shaving cream and press down until the whole paper is coated.
Pull the paper off of the shaving cream and let it sit for a few minutes.
Then wipe off the shaving cream with a paper towel and let the paper dry. Repeat this process for both sheets of paper so you have a sheet with raindrops and another sheet with an umbrella.
After about 30 minutes, the paper will be dry and ready to make into an umbrella!
Once the paper is dry, cut out the pieces and glue them onto a dark piece of paper.
This was a fun and easy craft to make. I think it would be fun to create at home with your children or in a classroom! These would also make a great classroom decorations for spring!
Printable Downloads
If you’d like to download the template, you can do that by clicking the words below!
How to Video
If you’re a visual learner, like myself, you will enjoy this video tutorial!
Frequently Asked Questions
You can use any type of foam shaving cream. Don’t use the gel kind.
You could set up the swirled shaving cream ahead of time, but not more than 15 minutes. The shaving cream will be less foamy once it sits.
Process art is all about the experience that children have while creating their art, and removing the focus on the end product. Since this is a sensory experience and the end product doesn’t need to look a certain way, this makes it process art.
I hope you will try this activity with your preschoolers! For more spring fun, click here!
Love it! Do you have a printable version?
I’m sorry, but unfortunately I don’t.
Did you make the yarn and clip display or buy it ready made? Where did you find it?
I bought it from IKEA. It’s actually a curtain wire used for shower curtains 🙂
I used this craft with my kindergarten students but incorporated math into it but just using 2 strings, one on each side of umbrella handle and then giving each student a different number of raindrops. They had to glue raindrops on each string and then write the addition sentence on the umbrella 🙂 it was a big hit!
This is a wonderful idea! I’m so happy to hear that it was a success!!