Simple Fork-Painted Bear Craft for Preschoolers

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Preschoolers will love creating this simple fork-painted bear craft. Using a fork instead of a paint brush creates a unique texture that kids will love.

Whether you’ve added this to your craft round-up following a trip to the zoo or as a follow-up to your favorite bear books, kids will love how simple it is to recreate their favorite bear with paper and paint. You’ll love the simplicity of the activity and the fact that it is so easy to change up the paint colors to create a variety of bears.

Fork-Painted Bear Craft

In this tutorial, I’m sharing how to make a simple fork-painted brown bear. But, at the bottom of the post, I’ll share with you how simple it is to make a polar bear, panda bear, and black bear, as well.

What You’ll Need

paper plate
construction paper
paint (white, black, and brown)
googly eyes
glue stick
plastic fork

What You’ll Do

1. Pour some brown paint on a paper plate. Dip the backside of a plastic fork into the paint and swipe it across a second paper plate. Continue painting with the fork until the entire plate is covered. (You could also create this bear on a piece of construction paper by having your preschoolers stamp the fork in a circle to create the bear’s head.) Set this aside to dry.

2. Once your bear’s head is dry, paint or draw (with a sharpie) a nose in the center of the face. You could also use a construction paper shape. Then draw on the mouth and add a tongue, if you’d like.

3. Use construction paper to add ears to your paper plate. If you used construction paper instead of a plate for the base, you could just paint the ears on.

4. Glue on the googly eyes, and your bear is complete!

Variations:

Polar bear – I suggest using a colored plate or construction paper for the polar bear. Use white paint.

Panda bear – Paint the head white and the ears black. Paint on black eye patches (or glue on black construction paper) before adding the googly eyes.

Black bear – Use black paint. I’d suggest brown paint for the nose so it will show up on the black face.