Make a Mandala with Natural Materials

I love collecting natural materials for art projects, and my daughter and I have had a lot of fun through the years collecting leaves, sticks, acorns, rocks and other materials from our yard, neighborhood or local park to use for painting or display.

NurtureStore has a great idea for making a mandala design with natural materials such as leaves and flowers. This is a really cool project kids can do on their own or each child can gather materials and the group can make a mandala together.

Depending on how durable your chosen items are, you can leave them outside or bring them inside and set up your design so you can see how it changes over days or weeks.

Making and observing mandalas is a very calming activity that sounds perfect for these hard days. Check out the full tutorial and lots of great ideas for making mandalas at NurtureStore.

[Photo: NurtureStore.]

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Acorn Crafts for Kids

Whether you have snow where you live or are on the wrong side of the world for that, these snow glob crafts for kids are a lot of fun to put together at home or in the classroom.

If you want to keep it super basic, you can download some snow globe coloring pages from Monday Mandala and have kids drawn in their own images (or color in what is there for the ones that are already filled). This could be a fun way to play with different media, having kids paint in one, draw in another, or use crayons in one, colored pencils in another, etc.

Or you can add your kid (or a classroom full of kids) to snowglobes with this craft from Twitchetts. It’s easy to make and fun for kids to help with, too.

You can also make snow globes with paper plates pretty easily, and there are lots of different options out there that should give you some ideas. This one from In the Playroom uses blue glittery pompoms as the snow and has a snowman in the background (though you can use whatever you want).

Mas and Pas uses a clear plate on top of a regular plate to make its snow globe, and Daydream into Reality just uses a paper plate to make the snow globe shape but there’s no snow involved. Their template includes different images you can put in the snow globe, or draw your own.

If you want to make a snow globe without the watery (so potentially less mess) you can make a waterless snow globe out of a plastic cup with this tutorial from The Pragmatic Parent. It uses tiny foam balls as the snow. Tidy Mom’s version uses a real glass jar and fake snow to flurry around.

And if you’re OK with using liquids in your snow globe, which will allow the snow to flutter like in a real snow globe, check out this version from 123 Homeschool 4 Me, which uses water and baby oil.

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