We love this nature suncatcher craft!
I like finding ways to incorporate natural items into our indoor environment and activities because not only are they beautiful but it also allows us to explore the world around us. With all the flowers in bloom right now it’s the perfect time to do simple spring crafts with the kids!
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DIY Nature Suncatcher Craft for Kids
This activity was inspired by our DIY Nature Slides for the light table. It uses simple materials and not only teaches kids about the environment in their area but it’s also a fun activity to work on fine motor skills.
Materials:
- Flowers/leaves from your yard or local park
- Laminator
- Laminating pouches
- String
- Scissors
- Hole punch
- Tape or suction cups
Start this activity outside by collecting flowers and leaves from your yard or local park. My daughter calls this part a “nature adventure” as we take magnifying glasses and bag for our finds with us and walk around the neighborhood. It’s a great way to begin discussions about local plant life and the life cycle of plants.
Once we collected a few different types of flowers and leaves we took them home and laminated them.
For this activity, we just laid the flowers on the laminating pouches, cut off the excess stems, and sent them through the laminator. If you have more time I’d recommend pressing the flowers first but my daughter didn’t want to wait a week or two to see her nature suncatchers so we just did them as is.
Related Crafts for your kids: 10 Rainbow Suncatcher Crafts Kids Can Make!!
After we laminated them my daughter cut around each flower and leaf, then she used a hole punch so we had somewhere to tie the string too.
Then it was time to hang and admire them! Just attach with a suction cup or even tape them on.
Beautiful right? I love spring crafts because they bring so much color into the house! The girls loved exploring the flowers with magnifying glasses and comparing the flowers and leaves.
Related Suncatcher Craft: Tissue Paper Stained Glass Rainbow Collages!
What kind of suncatchers have you made recently?
Looking for more crafts and activities? Check out our index for 100+ plus kids activities! Find activities by theme, materials, skills, age and much more!
Lisette, these are so cute! I just love them!
Okay, so that’s it: I gotta get a laminator.
And I absolutely LOVE your Pinterest board. I followed it and am now trying to figure out how to pin the whole board, lol!
I’m so glad you joined the Laugh & Learn Linkup. Hope to see you on there next week!
Yay! Thanks so much! 🙂
Love this, Lisette! Looks so cute in the window 🙂 I like that you could use them on the light table when you take them down, too!
Yes! They’d be great on the light table too! Thanks Katie!
love how these turned out! My daughter is constantly picking flowers and other things from nature. Think we’ll have to give this a try!
Oh these suncathers are beautiful. What a wonderful way to bring nature indoors.
These are so pretty and such a fun activity to do with kids. Thanks for linking up your creativity at the Thoughtful Spot!
Très beau, très poétique … Bravo à votre fille !
Hi Lisette,
I’m interested in making these for a summer camp craft. Could you possible answer a few questions for me?
1. Can you laminate the flowers immediately?
2. Do the flowers fade with time?
3. Do you think you could put a narrow piece of paper behind the flower and make a bookmark?
4. Was your lamination fairly thick? Was it hard to punch a hole in it?
Thank you for your consideration,
Mary Kay 🙂
Hi Mary Kay!
We laminated the flowers right after we collected them. They lasted for quite awhile (most of the summer) but they did fade, ours were kept in a window that got full sun all day everyday so that may have been a factor. Our laminator is just a basic one so it was easy for the kids to use a hole punch with it. I think that you could put paper with them to make bookmarks but I’d recommend pressing and drying them a bit more first if you want them to last. I think the moisture from the flowers with the paper could cause some longevity issues.
Hope that helps! ~Lisette
I love this idea and tried it with some kids. They loved it also. My only problem is I now have broken two laminators trying to do this activity. Maybe I put something too thick in the laminator? Sometimes it works great. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Hi Kristen! Sorry to hear that it didn’t work for you! I didn’t have any issues with our laminators (we’ve done this on three separate ones) but we used fairly thin flowers. Maybe flatten them with a book first or press them for a few days and then laminate?