Nature Art for Kids - Red Ted Art

Welcome back to Easy Crafts with Kids! As part of World Environment Day (5 June) we wanted to create a Forest Craft. A great opportunity to talk to our children about why the environment is so special, what we need to do to protect it and above all forest get crafty!

We decided to have a go at making some Nature Art People or Woodland People made from leaves, sticks and bark!

Leaf crafts — Making simple leave art since June 2011! Such a simple and sweet project to engage kids in over and over again!

Quite unlike me, I was cutting our “due date a bit find” and was looking around the house for inspiration.. when I remembered this lovely book:

The Book

Spring Song with Music.

It was a gift to Pip Squeak from her Uncle Ch. He loves finding unusual presents and he found a couple of wonderful old books with gorgeous illustrations. This is a book on Spring Songs, with beautiful little Flower Fairies in it. If you are musical it comes complete with music sheets. One day, I may attempt to play the tunes (in a very basic way) on the piano. In the meantime, we like reading the songs as poems and looking at the pretty pictures.

I know the book focusses on Spring and we are coming into summer now… but after all it is “only” the inspiration for today’s craft!

Creating Leaf People – Nature Art for Kids

I *really* wanted to make some very special Woodland Fairies. Now… crafting with a 3 year old requires simplicity. So we kept it simple and I love the outcome.

1) I made some “samples” for Red Ted first. He always likes to see a craft and then copy.. after that when he “gets” the idea, he has free reign. Here my “Tree People” and Leaf Fairy. I used some very flat bark we found as well as leaves collected on a walk to the local “wood”.

2) Glue a large leaf. Draw a head. Add a hat. Job done. I tried to get Red Ted to draw the head, or at least the eyes, but he wasn’t interested. He did like sticking on shoes as leaves. He did ALL of the below (save for the bits in pen).

3) And whilst I took the them all out to dry, made his very own creation – no drawing required: a large head, bark for eyes, bark for legs and leaves for shoes. Lovely. I was so pleased with his effort! This is a really good example of first “showing them how to do something” (especially young children, who have never made something specific before) and then letting them go wild with their imagination. I know next time we do leaf people Red Ted will be doing ALL the deciding as he will “know” what the aim of the craft is… and I will just sit back and watch his creations unfold!

4) I am going to put contact paper (sticky back plastic) over two of them (one being his wonderful creation) and keep them for our art calendar. Leaves do become brittle and crumble. UPDATE: these days i would “varnish” with a layer of white glue/ pva glue as it is slightly less plastic and therefore more eco friendly. It also preserves some of the 3d-ness of the leaves.

If you enjoyed this nature art project, you may also like our Andy Goldsworth Mandala Art: