Spring Hats

Spring Hats

This is one of our favorite projects that we do each spring. It is hard to believe that these hats are made from plain old newspaper. Everyone is successful and we have a great time making our hats.

The hats are made in several steps. It does take some adult help with making them and helping supply some of the materials.

The materials needed for the hats:

1. newspaper

2. masking tape -3/4 or 1 inch wide

3. tempera paint

4. silk or plastic flowers, ribbon, insects, spring fun foam Easter animals or flowers, Easter eggs, bunnies, or any other decorative type spring things. We find lots of great things from the dollar stores for our spring hats.

We start with about 3-4 full sheets of newspaper. Open the full sheets out on a table and mis-match the corners as shown below. Gather all the sheets up and place on top of the child's head. It helps to have two adults to do this. We do tell the child that it is going to be DARK under the newspapers for just a little while.

We gather the newspaper a bit to get the newspaper to form around the child's head. While one adult holds the newspaper sheets in place on top of the child's head, the other adult wraps the masking tape around the crown area of the hat. You will need to go around the hat with the masking tape a couple of times to hold it securely.

Then, lay the hat flat on a table and roll the edges in to make the brim of the hat. You can form the hat in many different ways. You could make a cowboy hat by rolling more on the sides. As you roll the edges up, you will need to secure it with small pieces of tape. We use tempera paint to paint the outside and part of the underneath side. You will need to paint the hat in two sessions--top and underneath.

We scheduled several parents to help the children decorate the hats. The children place the decorations where they want them and the adult uses the hot glue gun to glue them in place.

We have a spring hat parade just before our Spring Break and parade through the classrooms at our school.