Bring a little outdoors in with these fun craft ideas.
Hairy Hairy Caterpillar
Begin by reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and then make your own caterpillar for a fun and educational experience. This is a caterpillar made out of grass. All you have to do is mix some potting soil with grass seed and pour the mixture into a knee-high nylon stocking. Section off the seed mixture-filled nylon with a pony tail holder. Make five different segments and tie together at the end.
Place in water for ten minutes and remove and place in a plastic bag overnight. Take it out of the bag the next day. Add some googly eyes and pipe cleaners for eyes and antennae and allow to sit on a plate in the window. Water every other day and before you know it grass will begin to sprout and you’ll have a grass covered caterpillar.
Sun Catcher Spider Web
Create something decorative for your garden like a sun catcher spider web. With bamboo sticks, nylon jewelry wire, and beads you can create an eye-catching web. Wrap a piece of wire around the center of a group of about five bamboo sticks. Tie it off and spread out the sticks into an asterisk shape.
Now you can begin creating the web. Wrap another piece of wire around one of the skewers a few inches from the center. Thread some beads through the wire and move onto the next bamboo stick. Wrap it around the end and thread more beads and continue like this all the way around the circumference of the web. End where you began and trim any excess wire from the end. Do this again further out from the center all the way out until you are almost at the ends of the skewers, spacing each layer a few inches from the last.
You can create a spider out of the wire and some beads or just leave this as it is. Hang it in your garden and watch the light catch the wire and beads.
Paint Rocks
Collect some rocks from around your yard and decoratively paint them and place them in your garden.
Preserve Your Garden
As the season draws to a close, this doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye completely to your garden. You can preserve the leaves or petals of your plants and flowers. Then you can use them to stamp on note cards.
To press the leaves, you can allow them to dry out by pressing them between the pages of a dictionary or phone book. Put the material between a sheet of newspaper and allow to sit pressed for a few weeks. When you are ready to decorate with your preserved leaves and petals, mix glue and water (half and half). Affix your pressed leaves and petals onto the paper and brush with the glue mixture. Allow to dry.
Backyard Bird Feeder
There are so many different ways to make a bird feeder. One of the easiest is to take pine cones, coat them in peanut butter, and shake on some bird seed. Or you could take a 1-liter soda bottle and two wooden spoons and make a bird dispenser. Simply create two holes along the side of the bottle towards the bottom and slide the wooden spoons into the holes. Put a small eye screw in the top of the cap. Fill the bottle with bird seed, place the cap on top, and hang from something.
These are just a few gardening crafts you can do with the kids to make gardening that much more fun and educational. What are your favorite garden crafts?
