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.]

This time of year is a great time for pulling out all the apple and pumpkin themed worksheets to add a little seasonal fun to your learning. Let’s take a look at some fun pumpkin themed worksheets for the classroom or homeschool.

If you want some pumpkin printables that are actually about pumpkins, check out the pumpkin life cycle worksheets from 24 Hour Family that include parts of a pumpkin, life cycle, vocabulary, shape and counting activities. Rock Your Homeschool also has a cute printable and foldable life cycle worksheet for the life cycle of a pumpkin that kids can color and put together.

Inspire the Mom has ideas for a pumpkin unit study as well as printables (free with email signup) that include parts of the pumpkin, letter recognition, lesson plans and more. The blog post also includes more ideas for things like pretend play and centers, as well as books and videos with a pumpkin theme you can include in your study.

Do some pumpkin themed color by number with these printable coloring pages from The Artisan Life. Or try your hand at pumpkin I-spy with this printable from The Best Ideas for Kids.

Work on shape recognition and matching with this color, cut and paste activity from Free 4 Classrooms. And get some cutting practice with a pumpkin twist with these worksheets from Simple Everyday Mom.

These last two have a bunch of different fall themed worksheets to choose from, some of which include pumpkins. Willa Bean and Co. has a pumpkin themed alphabet set that includes pumpkins with the letters inside them and sets of upper and lower case letters on seeds you can use for matching.

And Worksheeto has a bunch of fall themed phonics worksheets, including pumpkin sight words with fall themed words and pumpkin letter matching.

For more pumpkin learning fun, see our pumpkin printables for kids and pumpkin STEM activities lists.

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