Craft for Kids: Hawaiian Lei & Grass Crown

Published August 21, 2016 | By the bird feed nyc

This week, our Smock Rock at TLB Music students are creating Hawaiian leis and grass crowns while listening to some of our favorite Hawaiian songs like “Aloha ‘Oe”, “One Paddle, Two Paddle” & “Lovely Hula Hands”.

Student Materials:

Lei: hole punched flowers in a variety of colors with holes punched in center for stringing
green paper leaves with hole for stringing, string, a variety of colorful straws, scissors, green crayon

Crown: 2 strips of green cardstock paper (3” x 11”) attached
scissors, glue stick, paper flowers

Teacher Materials: -scissors
flower hole punchers (shown at bottom of post), small circle hole puncher

Teacher Prep: -punch flowers in a variety of colors and cut green leaves
-punch holes in flower and leaves for stringing (leaves some flower without holes for crowns)
-cut string to appropriate lengths – cut 3” x 11” green cardstock strips
-glue strips of green paper in pairs to double length -precut straws if using heavy weight paper straws

Project Intro: Today our art project is inspired by hula dance and music! Hula dance comes from the Hawaiian Islands. Show pictures. What do kids see? Beach, ocean, palm trees, dancers, etc. The dancers wear grass skirts, flower headbands and leis and dance using graceful arm movements and swaying their hips. Demonstrate briefly. Hula dance is most often accompanied by accompanied by chanting, ukuleles, guitars, drums, puili sticks and other rattles. Today, we’ll make our own flower leis (a necklace of flowers!) and grass crowns while listening to beautiful traditional Hawaiian music!

LEI:

Lei Supplies

Ask children to choose about 20 flowers and a few leaves for their lei. If using 2 types of flowers like I did, choose 10 of each flower. Now we need to sort them. We’ll be stringing the flowers 2 at a time so we need to pair our flowers in pretty combinations!
Step 1 (group flowers): Group your flowers in piles of 2, choosing a variety of different color combinations!

We’re going to use pieces of straws to separate our pairs of flowers and leaves. Let’s cut straws into 1.5” pieces!
Step 2 (cut straws): With the help of a grown-up, cut 2 to 3 straws into 1.5” pieces.

Now we’re going to use green crayon to draw details on our leaves to make them more realistic. Look at pictures of Hawaiian leaves and notice the veins!
Step 3 (crayon leaf details): Using a green crayon, draw a line down the middle of each leaf then draw veins (lines) on each side.

It’s time to put our leis together! Choose a pattern to follow.
I used this pattern: 1. pair of flowers 2. straw 3. pair of flowers 4. straw 5. leaf 6.straw
Step 4 (thread flowers, leaves and straws): Thread flowers, leaves & straws on string following a pattern.

Step 5 (tie string): With the help of a grown-up, tie a knot with both ends of string to complete your lei!

GRASS CROWN:

Grass Crown Supplies

Ask children to choose 1 strip of green paper to make their crown. To create the look of grass, we’ll be making little cuts on one side of our paper strips.
Step 1 (make grass): With the help of a grown-up, cut one side of your green paper to look like grass. If initial cuts create wide pieces of “grass”, continue cutting those wide pieces to create smaller pieces!

Ask adults to help children measure their grass strip around their heads to decide where to glue it together.
Step 2 (make crown with strip): Wrap your crown around your head to decide where to glue then glue together to create your crown. Hold in place for a few second to seal in position.