Nature Stick Garden | Housing a Forest

I am having so much fun with the Play Inspired with Nature series that we are doing with Growing A Jeweled Rose. If you have missed any of our posts, let me catch you up to speed…we have been playing in the Mud; making amazing mud pies, trying our hand at painting with rain, creating magical princess mud puddles, pounding out a few Nature Prints and creating amazing nature inspired texture paints. I am telling you, we are having a blast! Today the fun continues as we are both creating and playing with gardens. Crystal is sharing the exciting Nature Play garden that they created with her kids and we created Nature Stick Garden Sculptures.

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After a fun morning playing in the back yard, the kids had collected a pile of “treasures”. They were excited to make a project with them and looked at me with expectant eyes. no pressure! I am sure it was their ploy to bring all the treasures inside, but hey why not right:)

It took me a bit to figure out what we were going to create, but when I saw the wooden beads in our drawer the light bulb clicked…Nature Sculptures. These little sculptures were so easy to create and I love that they showcase the kids treasures! Simple projects like this one are my favorite!

Materials:

I used a discarded sewing machine drawer as the base to our garden
Floral foam
Small sticks gathered from our back yard
wooden beads (provided by Craft Project Ideas)
small bits of nature ~ we used leaves, roots, feather, sticks, seeds and anything that was small and would fit into the opening of the beads
Rocks to cover the base and hide the floral foam

Go on a nature walk and collect all the little nature bits that you will need. Notice how small all the pieces are. You will need to make sure what you are collecting will fit into the end of the wooden beads.

There is no right or wrong way to put the beads together. The kids just added what they thought looked good. I love how each of the mini bead sculptures are unique.

Once the kids assembled their beads, they slipped them on the branches. Some of them were a little wonky, but that was half the fun! We chose not to glue anything down since the kids were really enjoying switching the beads around. I love that it turned into a interactive nature sculpture!

This might be one of my favorite finds the kids made. Any guesses on what it is?

Its a root from an annual that was planted in my garden last spring. I love the texture of the roots, and the little dirt particles that are still attached!

We found lots of “helicopters” (as my kids call them) in our back yard left over from last fall.

We were having so much fun playing and creating that I forget to take pictures of the kids actually playing with it:) Ha, well I guess that means it was a hit right!

Here are a few close ups of my favorite beads that the kids made. I absolutely LOVE the addition of the feathers. We have a few Urban chickens, and the kids found a few feather to add to their treasure pile.

The kids love collecting rocks, and almost always bring one back from when we are out and about. Special rocks for a special garden!

I mentioned before, we chose not to glue anything together. The kids were having so much fun switching out what was in each bead and where the bead was hanging that it would have taken some of the magic out of the sculpture.

This would be a great addition to a nature table or an interactive area outside. We will be revisiting this again soon, maybe we will use flowers next time!

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Make sure to stop by Growing A Jeweled Rose and check out Crystals inspiring Nature Play Garden for Kids. My favorite part is that everything that you need to make her engaging garden can be purchased from the Dollar Store. Love it!