Hi all! There is a guest writer this week! I am super excited for all the content she will be sharing- 8 Nature Crafts for Kids! I am absolutely honored to have her share her home projects with us all on amomandherblog. Hopefully you will find her easy projects as a go to this summer while taking a hike or outdoor walk with your kiddos. Without any further delay I will turn it over to Catherine (aka Lazy Mum).
Nature Cafts are the Easiest
One of my favorite activities over the past few months has been to take the children for a walk, gather some flowers, sticks or leaves and make nature crafts when we get home. Not only are they beautiful materials to work with, but they are also free and abundant!
All the elements needed to make wonderful crafts are all on our doorstep, or a short walk away. Nature crafts are about getting creative with what you can find in your local environment, and children love to make treasures and pictures from their finds.
So, whether you find sticks, pine cones, rocks, flowers or leaves, I’ve got a set of simple art activities for your kids that will develop their creativity and make some beautiful mementos.
Pine Cone Mobile
Natural pine cone mobiles are a fun project that look beautiful in any season. Pine cones are such an easy shape to wrap string or yarn around, you don’t even need to use glue. Simply take half a dozen pine cones, or as many as you can find and tie each one onto a stick. It’s fun to experiment with different lengths of string and see the effects. The mobile can be hung from a nail or hook with a single piece of string tied onto each end of the stick. Older children may wish to customize their mobile further with feathers, beads and flowers. And because there is no glue, nothing is permanent. So it can continue to evolve, be added to and changed. And if it is hung outside, the children will be able to observe how pine cones open up and close in different kinds of weather.
Nature Crowns
This nature craft is another wonderful way to use those treasures found on a nature walk. All you need is a strip of card or paper, long enough to wrap around your child’s head, and some PVA glue and sticky tape. Muddy Puddles have a fantastic video if you need a visual how-to. But it’s very simple. Spread a thick layer of glue along the card or paper, and lay your flowers, leaves, twigs, feathers and other finds along the full length to decorate. When the glue is dry, bring the ends together to form your “crown” and tape to secure. Make sure you capture lots of pictures of your kids in their fabulous headdresses!
Stick Dinosaurs
This is a wonderful craft for little dinosaur fans. The fun in this activity is in adapting what you find. It can either be glued to cardboard or paper, or made into a temporary display to photograph. You could go searching for big sticks and make a huge T-Rex the size of your lawn, or gather little sticks like we did, to make a smaller picture. My 4 year old absolutely loved snapping tiny sticks to make the claws and spikes for his dinosaur. Go forage with your little ones and improvise with the sticks you find!
Leaf Prints
I’m sure that, like me, you remember doing this nature craft in school. So why am I listing it here? Because the classics are timeless! And because the results you can achieve from leaf printing belie its simplicity. Any child or adult can use leaf printing to make something stunning because the beauty comes from the intricate design of the leaf veins. All you need is water-based paint, paint brushes, a variety of leaves in different shapes and sizes, and paper. I like to buy a whole roll of lining paper from which I can cut large sheets for crafts like this. Then you can get really stuck in! You could even use fabric paint and print onto t-shirts, sheets or curtains. Get creative!
To make effective leaf prints, all you need to do is 1) prepare your materials 2) ask your child to choose a leaf and 3) show them how to look for the side where the veins stand out. Then just paint the leaf, turn it over and press into the paper. Carefully lift off the leaf and that’s it! So simple and yet so effective. Now repeat, with all the colors and shapes you can find.
Unusual Paint Brushes
This is a fun activity, if a little messy, but is wonderfully expressive, explorative and creative. Anything can be a paintbrush – sticks, feathers, pine cones and leaves – so let the kids’ imaginations run free and encourage experimentation. It works great as a big art project, perhaps outside, using lining paper or wallpaper so the kids have lots of room to explore. An activity like this is often more about the process than the end results, but can still produce beautiful works of art.
Bark Rubbing
My eldest son did this activity recently, on a walk with his nursery at our local woodland. Bark rubbings are a such wonderful way for kids to learn about the different textures and patterns of tree bark. All you need are wax crayons, paper and trees! Remove any paper wrapping from the crayons and encourage your children to rub the crayon along its side for the best results. The finished rubbings can be made into works of art by trimming and making into a collage. Older children could pair their rubbings with a field guide to identify the tree it came from.
Air Dry Clay Imprints
I’m absolutely in love with air-dry clay. It’s such a simple, mess-free material for making wonderful keepsakes to treasure or give as gifts. Imprints of leaves, ferns and grasses make lovely ornaments and picture frames. If you are lucky enough to live by the sea, then shells, pebbles and dried seaweed are effective too. However, we have had the most amazing results from seeds, seed pods and seed heads. This seems to be because when the seeds have dried out, they are capable of leaving a really crisp imprint behind. There really are endless possibilities with this material, so please give it a go and experiment!
Rock Painting
During lockdown, my local community created a wonderful painted rock snake around our local duck pond. All the local children got involved with this nature craft, making a wonderful living art piece that was added to almost daily. Rock painting is such a fun craft because you can really let your imagination run wild. Interestingly, as the months have gone by, we’ve seen which painting methods have stood the test of time. Some pebbles were sealed and some were not. Some were just painted with poster paints and the designs have sadly washed away in the rain. But the best results? They came from nail polish and acrylic pens. So, if your kids want to get creative with some rock painting, just make sure you use materials that will stand up to the weather.
I hope you all enjoyed and were inspired by these 8 Easy Nature Crafts for Kids. Looking for more outdoor activities for the kids? See the ‘garden activities’ post on my blog Lazy Mum for more outdoor ideas this Summer.
What are your favourite nature crafts? Let me know in the comments!
Catherine Jones is the founder of Lazy Mum – short cuts and life hacks for parents. She is a copywriter, mum to 2 boys and lives on the south coast of the UK.
