Outdoor Nature Art Activities You Can Do Today

These art activities complement mixed age groups and are pretty simple to set up. Most will not need tools. However, including an outdoor art tool kit in your pack back or car broadens the playful art opportunities for your children. These mini kits can include some of your child's favourite pieces like shells, stones but string but scissors and side walk chalk should be there a well. 
Theses are all nature art activities that I have done with my nature kindergarten class and were easy, fun and done over an over again!!!

Clay Fairy Homes Bring enough balls of clay for each child. Pat into flat pieces to attach, add nature's loose parts for decoration and find a quiet space in the forest to leave the fairy home. Include a special gift for the fairy like a beautiful acorn or smooth stone.

Nature Faces This is a really fun seashore or forest activity and can be expanded to animal, monster, silly or alien faces. We prepared for this art activity by playing circle games which use facial expressions to guess feelings, looked at land art and read Let's Make Faces by Hanoch Piven.  Collect nature's loose parts from the seashore and arrange to make different faces. Some examples are stones, sticks, shells, driftwood and seaweed. Sometimes a carry a basket with special loose parts which complement the activity like flowers, leaves or pinecones.











Nature Mandalas This really creative activity can take place at the seashore or in the forest. I like to bring baskets for collecting nature's loose parts as it can require quite a lot of pieces. Begin by choosing a big enough area for fit your art and that people can walk around. Choose a larger piece for the centre such as a large rock or seashell. Then layer with circles or lines until you run out of materials. Sometimes when we returned the next day, the children were often surprised and delighted to discover that visitors had added another circle to our mandalas.
The children enjoyed this creative activity so much that I prepared a mandala provocation in the classroom and carried a mandala kit to our outdoor classroom for weeks. The kit included sticks, stones, shells and some cedar branches the children had collected and picked apart to make uniform sizes. They still collected loose parts in the outdoor classroom but the kit included some favourite parts.
 photo borrowed from Mud Puddles and Meteors
Nature Bracelets These very artsy bracelets are super simple but require you to bring wide sticky tape and scissors with you. Begin by going on a hunt to find small colourful loose parts to decorate the bracelet. Then your child can lay the pieces out in a pattern or design that or choose to be random. Wrap the tape sticky side out on your child's wrist and add the design. With all the wonderful colours of tape you can go wild and choose yellow, red, pink, purple or even zebra.

Nature Collage This activities can be as simple as creating picture frames out of sticks or planning ahead and brining a old frame, box lid, white glue, sticky Mac Mac or even string to make a clothesline. 
Collect nature's loose parts and then arrange them in different combinations until you like the look. These can be very detailed and beautiful. If making a permanent art display then transfer to the backing.
I love to offer this same experience in the classroom using old frames, pieces of fabric or felt for the setting then giving the children some nature loose parts and time. This activity can be seasonal, setting based and works excellently with recycled parts indoors and out. 
Want to discover even more fun activities check out this link.