What are some winter crafts/activities using only natural materials?

I know it's weird to be thinking of winter when it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere (or maybe it's not weird if you're in the Southern Hemisphere), but I'm lesson planning for next year's classes. One of my classes is called "Flower & Forest Fairies," and we're using the idea of fairies to learn about botany and ethnobotany. Each week, we'll learn about a new plant and do some sort of activity involving it (drink dandelion tea, make flower crowns, make twine from Daylily leaves, etc).

Winter is a tricky time, because there just aren't pretty flowers. We'll be using ink from walnuts and elder cones, drinking Western Hemlock needle tea, making wreaths (of course!), and tasting elderberry jam. But, I need one more wintertime activity!

So many winter activities use hot glue, and I'm really trying to avoid that. Part of my premise of the class is that we're using natural things to make things, just like fairies. Fairies wouldn't have hot glue, but would use pitch, sap, and other natural adhesives (as well as sewing and weaving).

If you have winter crafting ideas using natural materials, I'd love to hear them!

Also, if you have other fairy-tastic ideas for the rest of the year, please feel free to share them! So far, this is what I have planned:

September:

Rose: Eat rose hips & drink rose hip tea

Lavender: Lavender wands, or maybe flower crowns

Daylilly: Twine from daylilly leaves

October:

Western Hemlock: Drink hemlock needle tea (like spruce tea, but I have hemlock and not spruce on my property)

Chickweed: Eat Chickweed

Plantain: Taste plantain and make plantain poultice

November:

Elderberry: Sample elderberry jam

Alder & Walnut: Draw with aldercone & walnut ink. Learn about broadleaf trees.

??? Another idea would be great!

December:

Western RedCedar: Make boats (or something else) with cedar bark. Learn about trees with needles

Fir & Holly: Make wreathes with fir & holly (and probably Oregon Grape, too), learn about evergreen plants

???

January:

Cottonwood: Make cottonwood bud salve/balm of Gilead

Hazel: Make fairy wings with hazel supports. Eat hazelnuts

Cherry & Acacia: Learn about gum arabic & cherry sap and paint with watercolor on wings--add more designs to wings

February:

Maple: Start building fairy house, using maple sticks for uprights. Taste maple syrup

Willow: Use willow to weave the walls of the wattle & daub fairy house

Hemp & nettle: Make daub with fiber from hemp & nettle

March:

Nettle: Drink nettle leaf tea, eat cooked nettles, and paint fairy house with milk paint

Madder, goldenrod, woad: Make blankets out of naturally dyed wool for the fairy house.

Rushes: Make mats out of rushes for the fairy house

Grass: Thatch the roof with dried grass

Dandelion:

Dandelion: Drink dandelion tea, make tiny brooms for the fairy house

Finish Fairy House: Make ladders, tree forts, whatever else kids want to add

May:

Kale: Eat kale leaves and flowers

Calendula: Make calendula salve, or maybe 17 century soap balls

Plant a fairy garden: Kids can add tiny plants like yarrow & sweet cicely

Plant a fairy garden: Plant wild strawberry plants

June:

Plant a fairy garden: Plant seeds

Make flower crowns!

None of this is really set in stone. I teach in a homeschool co-op, so I only have the kids about 3 times a month.

I don't know how much twine you're making from daylilies, but crochet it into a mat? potholder? coaster?

Make paper (notes, stationery, wrapping) with dried flower inclusions?

I used to stuff pine needles into small muslin handstitched pillows as a kid -- pin cushion or sachet.

If you make rose beads, string them?

A bean picture? I loved doing that as a kid.

Make a book with pics of some (all?) of the other crafts made during the year?

Jennie Little wrote:I don't know how much twine you're making from daylilies, but crochet it into a mat? potholder? coaster?

Good ideas! The kids will be making little mats out of rushes later in the year when we start our big fairy house project. But, I would like to encourporate some more basket weaving than just the walls of the house. I have two classes (one is K-2, and the other 3-5), and I worry that the younger kids might really struggle with that kind of weaving. But, maybe if we did the "weave around sticks" weaving, where you make a sort of star shape? Maybe we could make little woven decorations (which could be used as Christmas ornaments) with them? We could weave cedar bark, blackberry, nettle, and daylily to make a cool design?

Make paper (notes, stationery, wrapping) with dried flower inclusions?

I do have all the stuff to make paper! They could even write a special note or drawing to a fairy (my daughter loves writing notes to the fairies)

I used to stuff pine needles into small muslin handstitched pillows as a kid -- pin cushion or sachet.

Good idea! I'm still trying to think of what best to do with the lavender, especially as I have multiple friends drying flowers for me. I do have a few boys signed up for the class, so I'm not sure if sachets might be too girly?

If you make rose beads, string them?

Ooooh, I hadn't have heard of these until now! Do you have any instructional/resources that you recommend? I found this reddit thread about it, but it looks a bit too intensive to do with my K-5th graders (5-11 years old).

Make a book with pics of some (all?) of the other crafts made during the year?

For the class's "homework," each kid will have their own Journal for them to draw, write nature observations, dry flowers, etc, in. Hopefully some of them put pictures of home activities in there! I'm not sure if I'll manage to get many pictures taken during class--my classes tend to be so hands-on that I usually don't even have time to think of taking a picture. Last year, in my Toy Science physics class, I had a student's mom take and put pictures in his journal. It was so cool, and such a great way for them to store their memories of the class and what they learned!

November -  use the outer green (black if dried) skins of the walnut to dye some clean sheep fleece.  No mordant needed, makes a nice dark brown, though this depends on the concentration of the dye solution.
December - make a drop spindle (there's a post somewhere here of the more 'natural' things to use) and spin the walnut dyed fleece from the November experiment.
Not sure where/when hops occur in your part of the world, but they can be used as a stuffing for small "sleep pillows", placed under the regular pillow; maybe mixed with lavender?
February - there might be a requirement for mud for the wattle and daub house . . . the clayier the better,  I understood wattle and daub to be willow or similar uprights and weavers, and the gaps filled in with daubed on mud.

Jill Dyer wrote:November -  use the outer green (black if dried) skins of the walnut to dye some clean sheep fleece.  No mordant needed, makes a nice dark brown, though this depends on the concentration of the dye solution.
December - make a drop spindle (there's a post somewhere here of the more 'natural' things to use) and spin the walnut dyed fleece from the November experiment.

Oooh! I was wanting to find a way to incorporate spinning. The kids will be making twine early in the year, but I haven't found a place to bring in spinning with a drop spindle. In my history class, I had the kids make their own drop spindles with pencils, paperclips, and cardboard. They actually worked rather well! (I posted some pictures in R Ranson's How to make a drop spindle - from almost anything thread).

Not sure where/when hops occur in your part of the world, but they can be used as a stuffing for small "sleep pillows", placed under the regular pillow; maybe mixed with lavender?

Great idea! A little sleep pillow is a lot more gender-neutral than a sachet, and would put all that lavender to use. I could probably have the school buy buckwheat hulls to fill the pillows with, or use some wool. For the younger kids, we could even make them with old socks, to make one of those microwavable heat packs.

February - there might be a requirement for mud for the wattle and daub house . . . the clayier the better,  I understood wattle and daub to be willow or similar uprights and weavers, and the gaps filled in with daubed on mud.

From what I recall, the wattle & daub houses were usually made with hazel. I might skip the maple and use hazel instead--or use maple for the fairy wings and hazel for the uprights. Hazel doesn't seem to rot and turn fragile as quickly as maple, too. I do have bamboo, so I might just bring that in, too.

I did a similar project in my Medieval history class, two year ago (permies thread here). The kids made medieval wattle & daub houses. That time, I used whatever straight-ish sticks I could find--some apple, some sitka willow, some hazel, some maple, and we wove with rattan reed that the school bought. I'd like for the kids to use willow, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to locate enough. I might end up using rattan reed again. Activities like this, with 24+ students, really encounter the problem of scale. If I were teaching just 5 kids, I could totally find enough willow and hazel to make the houses out of just that. But, my 5 acres just doesn't have that much--and I don't have any of the nice weeping willow--just sitka willow.

The medieval houses from 2 years ago

I was going to have the kids thatch the roof with straw...but couldn't locate any that wasn't all chopped up. In the end, I just harvest a crazy amount of dead, dry grass from my property. That worked surprisingly well!

What about something with autumn leaves? I'm thinking like leaf prints or rubbings....maybe even make salt dough impressions that could be coloured and hung for decorations.
These ones (not done with real leaves) are hung to make a thankful tree:


source

Skeletal leaves are also fun. May made a post on using a retting solution to make leaf skeletons https://permies.com/t/262971/Narrow-leaved-plantain-textiles#2622801 but some experimentation may be required.

Where I live, you can still find dehydrated berries (especially aronia) on plants in December if you look around. Maybe harvest some and bake cookies with them. You can leave some of them out with milk to thank the faeries.

RE the bean pics... try googling "bean mosaic". They don't have to be large, coaster size would work. I liked them because it got me to see beans in another way and it wasn't that hard to do..

One thing I remember making as a kid was a small tray made with flattened clay and a leaf pushed into the clay for an impression. A thicker "stem" was cut  by the teacher and curled back into the leaf as a handle. It was glazed and fired. We used it to hold keys for a long time.

A winter plant here is Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus). Can you think of a use for it?

Yesterday, we prepped a bit for the class. I harvested some rose and calendula petals and have them in the dehydrator. I also processed 12 blackberry vines--my hand is a little stiff from bashing so many blackberries with rock.

Today I tried out a winter-craft idea that I had: Making trees and snowflakes with sticks and weaving.

I learned that I'll need to prep all the stick structures for the kids, and that kids weave really loosely and need help on how to hold the weaving materials. But, it does seem like a pretty do-able weaving activity, especially for kids. I might have yarn on hand for the littlest kids.

I tried out these basketry materials for weaving with: thin cedar branches, rushes, Himalayan blackberry vine, nettles, and daylilly. The daylilly and rushes were the easiest for my daughter to work with.

This whole class was inspired by my daughter. Last summer, she really got into fairies, and we started making little things for the fairies, and "finding" things the fairies had made for us.

According to my resident fairy expert (my daughter) each fairy draws a spiral in its own favorite color. We have lots of fairies!

Tiny fairy crowns made of flowers

Letters from the fairies

That year, I had the honor of getting to sub in the clay & sculpture class. I had the kids make fairy houses. These are my daughter's:

My daughter's little fairy land, with a log home, slide, and more!

We added more things to her fairy garden, like a clothesline with gifts of flower petals for the fairies to make clothes out of:

Clothesline made from nettle twine and sticks, with foxglove and rose petals for the fairies to make clothes out of

Nicole, your homeschooling curriculum is so creative! Sure the kids are having fun and learning valuable things at the same time. I am wondering if you could use dried corn husks for thatching besides straws. There are natural colored corn husks and you could dye with dried plant materials collected during the year.

I just bought a few ears of sweet corns so I tested out while I was preparing breakfast. It's safe to do so because of all natural materials, no alum mordant etc. It took less than two hours since I used just one pot.

Oooh, those are so pretty! Thatching with straw and grass was a total pain, and required so much material. I had a big Rubbermaid tub full of cut grass, and it still wasn't enough. Corn husks might be a lot more colorful and fun...but I'm wondering how I'll get enough of them. We don't really eat corn.

Those are the inner husks of 3 ears. They are in season and the grocery store has big bin of them. Lots of people just peel off the husks when they shop and the trash can next to the bin is usually full of husks. Maybe you can check it out. Or ask people growing colored corns. The red color is from boiling regular husks with purple corn cobs.

Make baskets! Even  tiny ones out of pine needles. Gather grape vines, pine needles, tall grasses etc.
And weave away in winter.

Those corn husks are impressive, May - and just imagine them turned into baskets (as core, sewn over)
Back to the walnuts - can you see half shells turned into cradles for the junior fairies?

Jill Dyer wrote:Back to the walnuts - can you see half shells turned into cradles for the junior fairies?

Ooooh, great idea! They could also be large bowls for food storage! My parents have a walnut tree next door, and the squirrels store the shells on their property. I'll have to ask my parents to store some for me!

There's a place nearby that drops acorns onto the sidewalk--I should go get a bunch of those to be used as bowls and hats!

The dyed corn husks will turn dull in color and shrink after drying. The husks can be pressed flat like tamale wraps or twisted or braided for various crafts.

What did you use to get the blue corn husks? They sure are lovely!