Are you looking for some fun Mother’s Day crafts that the kids can make? These lovely Mother’s Day nature crafts are all easy, low cost and eco friendly.
Crafting with natural materials is so enjoyable for kids. They can have an exciting time exploring nature to find their craft supplies (getting their daily dose of exercise and daylight in the process), then turn their treasures into a beautiful, unique craft at home.
Nature crafts make truly personal gifts too, so they’re absolutely perfect for making mums feel special on Mother’s Day.
Brilliant Mother’s Day nature crafts for kids
Here are five simple Mother’s Day nature crafts that use things you can easily find at this time of year. Of course you don’t have to make them for Mother’s Day – they’ll put a smile on someone’s face any day!
Heart nature collages
These cute heart collages are ideal for even very young children to make. Simply collect some nature treasure while you’re out on a walk or playing in the park, cut a heart out of cardboard, and stick your nature treasures onto it using double sided sticky tape or glue.
If you want to hang your hearts up, punch a hole in each one before you start sticking.
Once they’re dry, your nature art hearts can be stuck onto greetings cards, threaded with string and hung up, or personalised with little messages. I love the idea of writing on the back and turning them into vouchers for mums with things like ‘breakfast in bed’, ‘extra cuddles’ or ‘no chores today!’.
Twig-wrapped flower pots
This is the perfect nature craft for kids who have an impressive stick collection. And if you don’t have any sticks at home, you can go out and hunt for some!
As well as sticks, you’ll need a small plant pot, some string, and a lovely plant to put in your pot. You use the string to create a length of tied-together sticks, which you then wrap around the pot to create a rustic finish. My twig-wrapped flower pots blog post takes you through a step-by-step guide to doing this.
We put some miniature daffodils in our pot, but you can use anything you like as long as it’s the right size. I think pansies and primroses would also work brilliantly for a Mother’s Day gift as they’re low cost and widely available at this time of year. Or you could buy a small houseplant and create a homemade gift that can be enjoyed indoors; I like the idea of using succulents or an indoor pot rose.
Nature clay pressings
These nature clay pressings are a fun way to explore natural materials, and make a lovely gift.
All you need to do is roll out a piece of air drying clay, arrange some nature treasures on the surface, cover the whole thing with a sheet of greaseproof paper, and gently press the top of the clay. Then peel off the greaseproof paper, carefully remove the nature treasures, and let the clay dry on a flat surface.
You can make this nature craft as simple or as detailed as you want. You might like to create specific shapes with your clay before you start adding things on top (cookie cutters work well here), or paint over the impressions once the clay is dry. If you want to hang your clay pressings up, make sure you poke a hole near the top edge while the clay is still soft.
Once your clay pressings are finished, you could mount them in a box frame, hang them on a twig tree, or simply display them on a shelf.
This is just one of the nature crafts in my book *A Year of Nature Craft and Play. There’s a fun nature-themed activity for every week of the year, with eco-friendly art, crafts, games, gardening projects and science experiments to enjoy. You can find out more and take a sneak peak inside in my nature play blog post.
Nature inspired suncatchers
This is a lovely way to bring a little bit of nature indoors. Kids can quickly and easily turn pressed flowers or collected nature treasure into a unique hanging decoration.
You only need a few basic supplies. The main thing you’ll need to get hold of is sticky back plastic (known as contact paper if you’re in the US). This is usually sold in craft and stationery stores, or you can find it *online.
Start by deciding what shape you want your suncatcher to be – circles and squares are easiest – then cut it out of your sticky back plastic. If you go for a circle it helps to draw around a saucer or plate.
You can add a border to your suncatcher by cutting a slightly larger shape out of card. This is optional, but it’s a good way to hide any scruffy edges! If your suncatcher has straight edges you could even use twigs to create a rustic border.
Peel the backing off the shape, then stick your border on and have fun applying your nature treasures.
Once you’re done, add another layer of sticky back plastic over the top, with the sticky side facing down. Trim off any edges in line with the border or bottom layer, then punch a hole in the top and thread with ribbon or string to create a hanging loop.
These nature-themed suncatchers look amazing when you hang them in a bright window, where the sun will highlight all the wonderful colours and textures. You could hang them from a window handle, or use a *suction hook.
Homemade nature-inspired Mother’s Day cards
How about using nature as your inspiration for a homemade Mother’s Day card? Here are two super-easy ideas to get you started.
Use natural ‘confetti’ to create a pretty effect on your card. Small paper punches work brilliantly here. We used a *heart punch and a *butterfly punch, but I think a leaf, bird or star would all be lovely for a mother’s day card too.
To make your confetti, just collect some fallen leaves and use them with the punch like you would paper. When you’ve got a little pile of punched shapes you can glue them to the card.
You can use your confetti to make a specific shape, spell out a message, or create a random pattern. If your little ones love art they might like to draw a design first, then use the confetti to fill it out or add details. There are no rules with this one and you can keep things really simple, which makes it a great option for very young children.
Red Ted Art‘s stick heart canvas inspired this rustic twig card made from short lengths of stick. It helps to draw a pencil outline of your heart on the card first, and you might need to trim your lengths of twig to make them fit well.
Attach the twigs to the card with *pva glue or *double sided sticky tape. If you like you can then add extra details and words with coloured pencils or pens.
If you want to keep it super-simple you could go for a fill in the blank Mother’s Day card.
Want to share your fabulous Mother’s Day nature crafts with the world? My lists of nature captions and flower quotes are super-useful if you’d like to add an inspiring quote to your pictures. And if instagram is your thing, the copy and past lists in my nature hashtags post will save you loads of time.
More nature crafts for kids
If you love using nature to inspire your crafting, here are some more blog posts you might like to take a look at.
Heart nature crafts aren’t just for Valentine’s Day – use them to share the love at any time of the year.
My Easter nature crafts and Easter jokes for kids are ideal for some Easter-themed projects, and my Earth Day activities for kids and Earth Day quotes posts are full of lovely ways to celebrate our planet.
This post has lots of lovely nature craft gift ideas for kids.
My autumn nature crafts roundup has fifteen great ideas for autumn nature craft and play.
This selection of winter nature crafts is great for chilly days, and my list of spring nature crafts is full of ideas for when the weather starts to warm up.
You’ll find twenty five easy nature crafts in this bumper roundup.
Don’t forget to check out my book *A Year of Nature Craft & Play too!
Even more ideas for outdoor fun
Still on the nature play theme, I’ve got a whole series of outdoor play bucket lists for you to explore. There’s a free printable list for spring, summer, autumn, winter and exploring nature with children – perfect for sticking on the fridge and using whenever you’re struggling for reasons to get everyone outside!
Fancy some nature-themed giggles?
I’ve also got a whole host of family-friendly nature jokes for you and the kids. You can have a chuckle with flower jokes, plant puns, bird jokes, bee jokes, tree jokes and garden jokes – they’re all very silly and guaranteed to get kids giggling 🙂
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