Observe the Seasons with this Step-by-Step Guide to Oil Pastel Suncatchers

This project started with my son's discovery of oil pastels while I was laminating some things. Out of curiosity I scribbled in a laminating pouch and laminated it just to see what would happen after I laminated it, and so these cute sun catchers were born!

Supplies Needed for Season Tree Suncatchers

Construction Paper (We used a variety, but you could do all black or all brown.)
Pencil
Scissors
Oil Pastels
Laminating Sheets
Laminator

Steps to Create Season Tree Suncatchers

To start with we traced the kids' hands onto construction paper along with part of their arm to be the trunk of the tree. I did the two littler ones, but my oldest wanted to do her own.

Then I set them all loose with oil pastels in autumn colors to draw in the laminating pouches. The girls decided to draw more trees along with leaves. E scribbled all over the inside of the laminating pouch, and was upset when I took it to laminate it!

Once they were happy with their creation, I put in the hand tree trunk and laminated it!

It created a lovely sun catcher! Here are their autumn trees.

The girls had such a good time with the autumn ones that they wanted to do the rest of the seasons. Each time we started with a hand print for the branches. We varied the colors of the construction paper trees to match the seasons. Then we used appropriately colored pastels for the season, so warm colors for fall and cool for winter and so on.

Here is winter:

E moved on to something else after winter, but the girls continued on to spring and summer.

Here is spring; they even included some flowers:

And here is summer:

Even I had to give it a try. I cut out a tree instead of a hand and put all 4 seasons in one.

I did find that it works best when you use a lot of color and draw on both sides of the lamination pouch. The colors end up overlapping and blending more that way. For mine I tried to color around the tree, but the kids just drew all over the laminating pouch, even overlapping the tree.