Nature alphabet

Nature art (also sometimes called land art) is a wonderful nature activity that encourages creativity and fine motor skills in children of all ages and abilities. All you need is some imagination and natural materials to make pictures, shapes and patterns or letters, numbers and words. How about challenging the children to write the whole alphabet using different found materials like we did below.

You could have a nature treasure hunt in the garden or go on on a nature walk to find natural materials to use like leaves, sticks, stones, shells, grass, plant stems, bark, fallen fruit, nuts, seeds and flowers*. *But pretty please don’t pick any wild flowers, only collect ones you have grown yourself or fallen ones you find on the floor.

On windy days it’s hard to make a pictures and shapes with leaves and lighter objects without them blowing away. So you could always bring your leaves and found objects home to play with. You could then glue your finished pieces to paper or cardboard so you can keep and enjoy them for longer.

Or you could take photos of your letters, numbers, shapes or pictures as you go so you can then print them out as artworks, learning resources or even turn them into cards to give to friends and family.

If you photograph your letters and or numbers as you go you can then print them out later to use in spelling and word games or pin them up as literacy or numeracy aids. You can arrange the photos together to spell the whole alphabet.

Or leave them out as loose letters for the children to arrange into words, messages and sentences. If you are making nature art numbers don’t forget to make some simple mathematical symbols like plus +, minus -, times x and equals = so you can use the numbers later in maths games.