Today, you might like to tell your children to put their colouring pencils down.
Instead, encourage a fun animal nature craft activities where they’ll colour/color with nature instead!
I’ve been wanting to use more natural products in our play activities at home and I’ve been introducing more and more nature projects.
This is a simple activity that can take anywhere from ten minutes to 30 (depending how much your children get into it). It’s so easy to set up too!
Why try an animal nature craft?
There are so many advantages to ditching the pencils and trying something different with your children.
This activity:
- Tactile, sensory experience
- encourages problem solving
- Builds fine motor skills
- connects your child with their natural world
- gets your child outside
- build creativity
- It’s eco friendly
Animal Nature Craft: Colour/Color with Nature
Here’s how to set your nature craft activity:
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-  Print your free animal templates: Download Turtle printable, Download Kangaroo Printable, Download Bird printable, Download Cricket printable
- Spend some time outside with your children looking at the beautiful natural world. Collect some natural materials while you’re there. Collect leaves, flowers, seed pods, rocks, dirt, moss and more.
- Â Lay out all the materials on a table including some scissors and glue (optional).
-  Print your free animal templates: Download Turtle printable, Download Kangaroo Printable, Download Bird printable, Download Cricket printable
This activity was not only great for fine motor skills but we also compared the real body covering of animals (which we’ve looked at before) to the nature we’d collected. The grass and fern leaves that Miss Possum collected mimicked kangaroo hair and the clover really did look like turtle scales.
Turtle Nature Craft
Nature can help create beautiful patterns on a page. Nature is so good at making anything look stunning!
Kangaroo Nature Craft
These templates are free to download. Â There’s one condition. You must use nature to colour them in. No pencils allowed!
Enjoy this animal nature craft!
You may also like our
Nature Arts and Crafts Pack
This pack will provide hours of fun, learning,
and creativity for you and your children.
– Over 30 nature arts and craft printables
– Printables include an easy how-to instruction sheet
Just add nature to bring the printable to life!
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I really like the kookaburra template Pen (they’re all cute though!).
My girls has an art incursion at school yesterday. It was called ‘Raw art’ and they made geckos and lizards out of dirt – and they turned out amazing.
Oh I would have loved to see a picture of that Kirri! I’m going to google raw art now.
Great idea! I will definitely be trying this with my 4-year-old!
Thanks Erin, I hope she enjoyed it!
They look so good collaged with nature. I like the grass and fern bits the best, how does it hold up after a few days? My little girl would start to freak out if she glued on green grass and it died too quickly.
It wasn’t too bad after a few days actually (but it is quite chilly here). Perhaps you could used dried out leaves?
My favourite is the lawn cuttings kangaroo! What a great way to explore nature and art 🙂
Thanks Kell. We had a great time. I love the kangaroo too! Miss Poss did a great job.
So cute! Love them Penny. I love the idea of nature as materials for collaging and patterning on them as well. Pinned 🙂
Thanks so much for Pinning Debs 🙂
How cute are these you clever lady! Love all those different textures and colours from nature. We were just talking to ‘our’ kookas this afternoon so this would be a great activity to do with the girls this week. We even have the same white basket so that means we will have to do it!!
Naww Jode, you’re the best. You always make me feel like I’ve done a great post. he he he. This one was very last minute but as you can see, the girls loved it.
Fab!
We’ve made pictures with leaves in the past, but I love the idea of drawing an outline to work with.
Thanks. Printing now.
I just thought we’d start slow. I’ll let Miss Poss go for it soon. I’m sure she’ll come up with something spectacular. She has quite an imagination!
Why haven’t I ever though about that? This is such a wonderful idea. I’m going to have to get my great-niece and great-nephews to do this with because I want to do it!
You know you don’t need your great-niece and great-nephew to do it! 🙂 I love been crafty and I have as much fun as the kids. It’s so nice to get creative again!
Actually, I do realize that. That has been one of the fun things in writing my blog. Since I don’t always have a little one handy to do the crafts for my posts, I usually make the sample. It is fun getting to cut, paste and color again!
If you can only use nature than you can make paint dyes out of plants and use those as well right?
Ohh, I’d love to see that Faigie and yes, I’ll let that once pass. 😉
Awesome idea & that’s for the printables. We will be giving this ago on the weekend.
I love nature activities for the kids, great way to enjoy the outdoors creatively.
Printing as I write! Wonderful idea as usual Penny. 🙂
Thanks for sharing the picture of it Steph. It thrills me to think that you (on the other side of the world) are able to print out something that I created. It brings a smile to my dial!
I pinned this almost as soon as I saw it. Great idea and so simple for children of all ages. Thanks for this. I’ll look forward to doing it with my little girl.
Thanks Kate. I’m so glad you liked it and thank you for taking the time to comment. 🙂
Lovely! I’m pinning this and I promise we will use nature and not crayons!
You better Jode! Although I did only say no pencils and not no crayons. So, technically you can use crayons. he he he :p