Easy nature craft for kids

Miss T had been asking me to craft with leaves for days. She wanted to glue them all on to cardboard and make a picture from nature. I could just imagine gloopy glue, sticks and leaves all over the house. I was not in a messy play mood. Instead, we did this easy nature craft for kids using nature loose parts and a sticky contact wall.

Learning in nature.

It turned out a bit like a scenery. A mosaic of leaves, grasses, weeds and flowers. That wasn’t even the fun part! The fun part was going for a walk in nature for a good hour, collecting natures loose parts. Before this easy nature craft for kids, there was lots of learning. Miss T chatted about different style leaves, she noticed the textures and colours in different plants, we talked about how some plants are poisonous, she counted X amount of leaves from different plants.

She was quite inquisitive investigating pollen in flowers and watching bee’s go from petal to petal. We talked about the purpose of bee’s and flowers. After discussing nature, flowers, trees, bees and the dangers of nature we headed home with our collection of natures loose parts.

It didn’t stop there.

I gave Miss T a tray and she sorted her loose parts into categories. She had a collection of different flowers, a pile of foliage and a pile of bark and twigs. She thought we were heading for the craft cupboard to get the glue when I told her she should make a picture on contact. “What is contact?” she asked.

Helping tape the contact up on a wall Miss T was experimenting with the sticky surface. She kept poking her fingers on it, and then at different speeds she was seeing how long it stayed stuck to her finger. Yes, we sacrificed one piece of contact. It ended up with hair, fluff, finger-hand and foot prints on it, and then she tried to see if the cat would stick to it. Kitty was not impressed.

Nature loose parts on the sticky contact wall.

Take two. Miss T stuck the nature loose parts on to the stick wall. She used twigs and bark to make a trunk of a tree. She used grass to border the bottom. She tried to use larger pieces of bark chip but they were too heavy and kept falling down. Frustrated at first she kept trying to stick them, pushing them on harder and trying to hold them for longer. Another experiment that didn’t work. So, she skipped the bark chip and tried out some flowers.

Certain objects stuck better. She learnt to press on the surface and not on the contact herself as it bumped things off. She learnt that bigger flatter leaves stuck better. she learnt that oily flowers did not. She then showed big brother Dimples her nature craft and asked if he wanted to. of course he did.

Side by side they did some easy nature craft for kids together. Miss T, who is very very talkative, told Dimples all about her exploring and where she found the loose parts, what we seen and who we seen, how many bees she counted and so on.

Try these kids activities.

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