Nature & crafting: the perfect combo

admin
, 09 May 2025
Nature & crafting: the perfect combo
Felt making © Kt Bruce

Aimi Rifat

Wilder Learning & Communities Officer

Nature and crafts are two of my favourite things in life. Through my children’s education sessions a Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, I'm lucky enough to bring these two passions together. 

When I'm planning a session, I always try to have an element of craft to help engage children with nature in a fun and creative way. Most children will learn and retain information better, if they process it through all of their different senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Crafting is an excellent way to enable this sensory learning to take place.

Phytoplankton models
Plankton models © Aimi Rifat

Crafting provides a space for children to explore their imaginations, express themselves through different mediums and develop their creative thinking skills. So far this year, we've run a variety of different sessions:

🌻 Making natural paintbrushes out of grasses, seedheads and feathers to explore the different textures in the landscape 
🌻 Exploring the changing colour of leaves in autumn, by creating a felted leaf garland
🌻 Making phytoplankton models using wet and dry felting, to help bring to life Blue Carbon
🌻 Understanding the landscape and structure of leaves using mono-printing
🌻Identifying birds on the nature reserve and then creating a felt or hand embroidered bird

Felted bird
Felted bird © Aimi Rifat

When children get stuck into a craft activity, I've noticed that they become very focused and absorbed. It also makes them extra resourceful, as they try to find imaginative solutions using the materials we provide. Albert Einstein said that 'Creativity is intelligence having fun' - I'd definitely go along with that.

Mono-printing with plants
Mono-printing with plants © Aimi Rifat

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You can find out more about our family and education events here. 

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