From an early age in kindergartens, and later in schools, children begin to learn various types of needlework. In order for this activity to be not only developmental, but also educational, teachers combine handicrafts with lessons about the surrounding nature.
To convey to children the importance of preserving nature, educational institutions hold competitions for making children's crafts on the topic of protecting forests or polluting the planet.
Materials for making crafts: natural and artificial
You can use any material to make children's crafts, but most parents prefer natural materials. In addition, by collecting natural materials with your child, you can once again talk about the importance of keeping the environment clean.
While walking through the forest you can collect a lot of material for creativity, for example:
- Cones and acorns;
- Leaves and branches;
- Rowan berries;
- Interesting shaped driftwood.
However, not only natural materials are good for making crafts with your own hands. Artificial materials will also be excellent helpers in preparing interesting work.
To create an unusual craft, you can use:
- Unnecessary boxes;
- Garbage bags;
- Plastic bottles;
- Plasticine;
- Disposable tableware.
For handicrafts with children, it is necessary to use different types of materials so that the child becomes familiar with non-standard ways of performing creative tasks.
Unusual door wreath made of pine cones, branches, leaves and berries
Autumn is the best time to make something from branches, cones and leaves, because in autumn you can often find cones and amazingly beautiful leaves. Recently, decorative wreaths made of leaves and branches have been very popular, which are usually hung above the entrance to the house. They can also decorate the interior of a house or apartment. In addition, such crafts are ideal for the Autumn Festival in kindergarten or elementary school. Such crafts look very original and original, and serve as an excellent decoration for any interior.
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More crafts from pine cones
To make a wreath from branches you need:
- Three large pine cones,
- Many small pine cones,
- Foam rubber more than 30 cm long, which will serve as the basis for the wreath,
- Hot glue gun,
- Sackcloth,
- Acrylic paints (white, beige, brown, yellow),
- Acrylic spray (colorless),
- Small and large secateurs,
- Several small flexible branches,
- Berry branch,
- A beautiful ribbon on which to hang the finished product,
- Two large magnets (preferable, but not required).
So, let's start making the wreath. First of all, you need to make flowers from small pine cones and paint them with acrylic paints. To cut the pine cones, use a small hand pruner. You need to start cutting the cones from the middle, gradually moving upward. Please note that after such treatment a lot of garbage remains, so make sure that the trash can is nearby. To remove excess scales, use the end of a pruning shear. If possible, work right outside. This is very convenient if you are in the country. You must handle the pruning shears very carefully, otherwise you may suffer serious injury.
The basis for the wreath will be a foam base. It needs to be wrapped in burlap and glued with hot glue on the back side. Now that the base is ready, you can take hot glue and glue small flowers from cones onto it. It is better to place them closer to each other so that the flower petals touch.
A twig with berries and several small branches should be placed on the back of the wreath and glued with hot glue. Then you should take a bright ribbon, fold it in half and make a loop at the top of the wreath.
The final stage is making large flowers from pine cones. For this you will need a large pruning shears. To prevent the scales of the cones from getting into your eyes, wear special safety glasses. You need to cut out the flowers, moving from the middle up. All that remains is to paint the artificial flowers with bright acrylic paints and glue them to the base. To make flowers last better, coat them with a clear acrylic spray. The wreath is ready! More ideas for wreaths made from twigs and branches:
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Crafts on the theme “Save nature”
Making crafts on an environmental theme is a very exciting activity that does not require large expenses. In some cases, making crafts on the theme of taking care of the forest and nature will be an excellent opportunity to get rid of unnecessary trash accumulated at home.
Ideas for children's crafts can be found in sufficient quantities on the Internet or in children's educational books. And crafts such as posters with slogans, wreaths or appliqués from natural materials can be made without special skills and knowledge. All you need here is imagination and available materials.
DIY straw houses
Miniature houses made of straw look interesting and fabulous. And, most importantly, it is quite simple to carry out such a fake. To make it you will need thick paper (or cardboard), glue, scissors, pencils, beads or ribbons for decoration and straws. First you need to make the “frame” of the house, its walls. To do this, you need to take sheets of cardboard or thick paper and draw them out so that when glued together they form a box.
Mark the door and windows of your house, then carefully cut them out. We glue the resulting walls into a rectangular box. Then you can proceed to the next part of the work - pasting the house with straw. To do this, measure the length of its walls so that the straws do not turn out longer or shorter. After you have covered the walls of the house, you need to make a roof according to the same principle as a box - you should make a triangle from thick paper or cardboard. Next, we cover the roof with tufts of straw. We connect the roof with the walls - we get a house. In order to make it more beautiful, you can use paints and brushes, additional decorations in the form of feathers that could “peek out” from under the roof straws. Door and window openings can be decorated with fabric or thin wooden plates.
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Drawing on the theme “Ecology”
Perhaps the simplest craft, which is not only easy to perform, but also allows you to show your child’s imagination, is a themed drawing on the theme of forest.
Let the child draw a clearing with trees on a piece of paper. On one side of the paper there will be a blooming green forest, and on the other side a lawn with a couple of trees surrounded by garbage. You can supplement the craft drawing with a slogan that will reflect the importance of keeping the forest clean.
The procedure for storing workpieces
It is recommended to make crafts from branches with your own hands immediately after collecting and pre-processing the raw materials. Long-term storage of the material is contraindicated. The branches dry out and begin to break.
If the work is not carried out during the hot season, then it is permissible to place the container with dried branches outside. Small volumes of raw materials can be placed in the refrigerator. Do-it-yourself driftwood crafts are made from dry material. The blanks can be stored in the house or any outbuilding.
If the wood is too dry to work with, the material is moistened with water. During long-term preliminary storage, this cannot be avoided. In this case, simple irrigation from a spray bottle may not be enough. It is better to pre-soak the raw materials in a container, then dry them in a ventilated area.
Note!
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Poster application “Save the forest”
When making a forest-themed applique, you can use all available means. Three-dimensional parts can be made from natural materials, for example: people and animals can be made from acorns or branches, and trees, bushes, rivers and clouds can be molded from plasticine.
All that remains is to choose the situation that the child will depict on the application. Perhaps it will be a fire in the forest from which animals are fleeing, and people will be engaged in extinguishing the fire.
DIY straw paintings
One of the most popular techniques is the production of simultaneously flat and visually three-dimensional paintings from straw. It’s not difficult to master it yourself, just figure out how it’s done, although it’s a rather labor-intensive process.
How to do it?
To create a neat and beautiful painting from straw, you will need, again, scissors, thick sheets of paper (or cardboard), glue, brushes, pencils and, of course, the straw itself. First of all, you need to figure out what you will depict on your “canvas”. Next, lightly draw the main details on paper or take as a basis, for example, pictures from coloring books, books and magazines. Please note that we draw the basics of your picture not on the paper that will be the basis of the fake, but on any other.
Then prepare the straw according to the method mentioned above: dip it in an ammonia solution, cut the straw with scissors, iron it. Glue the straw onto the drawn parts, let them dry, then carefully cut them out. After all this, you can safely take the sheet of paper or cardboard you prepared for the base. Glue the resulting pieces of the painting directly onto the “canvas” and press gently. The picture is ready! If you want to make it a little brighter, color it with paints or ribbons.
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Craft “Earth globe”
There are several ways to make the “Globe” craft. The simplest is to use an old small ball, which needs to be covered with blue plasticine. On one hemisphere, depict a clean and healthy land with animals using green material, and on the other, brown land with fires. On both sides of the craft, glue paper hands that hold the ball.
The same idea can be realized using paper, a balloon, paints and disposable gloves.
Making a globe with hands shows that the future of our earth depends entirely on how each person relates to his environment and nature.
Winter forest
An excellent option for crafts made from branches and driftwood for the interior would be a forest. The product can be made in the form of a panel or installation. Bushy branches are needed for work. Objects are simply glued to a vertical background or placed on a horizontal surface.
The twigs can be pre-painted with white paint to imitate snow. The forest will turn out to be winter. You can make snow on the ground using pieces of cotton wool. The picture can be supplemented with any other suitable objects.
Make a free bouquet for a vase in the same way. Branched rods painted with gold or silver paint look interesting.
Craft “Bonfire”
The image of a fire is the most popular symbol, which clearly reflects the meaning of children's crafts on the theme of a fire in the forest. In addition, for crafts it is not necessary to use just paper cut in the shape of autumn leaves. You can use natural leaves collected in the autumn forest.
To make a fire from leaves you need:
- Leaves of different colors and sizes;
- Several branches to represent logs;
- Glue and cardboard base.
To complement the craft, you can cover the finished fire with gold glitter.
Which twigs and branches are best to choose?
As for branches, it is better to choose straight ones that do not have resin on them. Therefore, spruce or pine branches are not very suitable for making decorative items. The fact is that it is difficult to clean the knife and hands of resin after working with pine or spruce branches, and this is not very convenient. Branches whose fibers are located in the same direction are ideal for crafts. They are called straight grain.
But if you have already accumulated sufficient experience in making products from spruce and pine branches, then you can easily use them. When choosing branches, you need to ensure that they are flexible enough. Such branches are easier to process because they contain a sufficient amount of moisture. It is quite difficult to cut something from branches that are too dry because they do not bend well. There are crafts that require forked branches. Since the fibers of such branches go in different directions, it is more difficult to work with such material. This requires certain experience and skill.
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Other crafts from autumn gifts of nature:
— Crafts from chestnuts, spikelets and other gifts of nature — Crafts from autumn leaves — Crafts from acorns — Crafts from pumpkins — Crafts from pine cones — Crafts from dried flowers
Craft tree in a jar “Take care of the forest”
Another unusual idea that carries an important meaning, namely, it symbolizes problems with forest protection.
To implement this original idea you need to take several steps:
- Prepare a small jar with a screw-on lid and a tree-shaped twig that fits the size of the jar;
- Prepare small multi-colored leaves; it is better that the leaves are made of artificial material, such as foil;
- Glue the branch to the lid with a glue gun and let the workpiece dry;
- Glue several petals to a branch, forming a visual tree;
- Place glycerin diluted with water in a jar;
- Carefully place the tree in the solution, and pour the remaining leaves into the jar (in the future, they will float beautifully in the jar);
- At the end, screw the lid tightly, having previously lubricated it with strong glue.
This product will be an excellent solution for displaying forestry crafts in higher grades of school.
Crafts on the theme of forest will always be relevant. It is important to tell children during the manufacturing process how important it is to take care of the environment.
There are many ideas for implementation, but their main meaning is the same - to involve the child in an exciting process, while at the same time explaining the importance of preserving the purity of nature.
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Preparation of material
It is always easier for beginners to make crafts from birch branches. Wood initially has all the necessary qualities:
- softness;
- flexibility;
- ease of processing.
It is permissible to start needlework immediately after collecting the material. No preliminary preparation of wood is required. When using oak and maple branches, any aging of the material is excluded. The breeds are classified as hard varieties. After the raw materials dry, their use becomes more difficult.
It is advisable to collect material for crafts from tree branches in early spring. During this period, the buds had not yet appeared, but the movement of juices inside had already begun. Branches are cut from trees. For some products, fallen specimens, intricate roots, and driftwood are suitable.
If the weaving process is intended, then the branches are soaked in water and dried naturally. Dry material risks crumbling, eliminating the expected creative results.
Create with your children
Nothing brings a family together like joint action, try to design with your children. Come up with, discuss, analyze different options, argue and jointly create an approved option. Don't try to repeat what you saw, try to create a unique creation.
Understand what accent is missing in the house and what you can create to convey a special style. Dare, as Faina Ranevskaya said, “Beauty is a terrible power” and this power is in your hands.
