This DIY witch hat (or wizard hat) is inspired by our stunning flower crown that we made this past summer. This hat is just as beautiful and it’s the perfect variation of the crown! 

There are a lot of steps listed below, but don’t get overwhelmed. I also want to mention that there is some room for error in these steps. I certainly didn’t execute them perfectly, but the hat turned out awesome! Just take it one step at a time and soon you will have a beautiful hat for your Halloween celebration or outdoor fall adventures. 

Ready to make a leaf hat?! Here’s what you’ll need..

Supplies:

• Clear contact paper
• Scissors
• Compass
• Pencil
• Scissors
• String
• Tape and or stapler
• Leaves from your yard! I pressed our leaves for a few hours to flatten them out a bit.  If you are don’t have any pieces of nature to press, you can order pressed flowers and leaves right here

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How to Make the DIY Witch Hat or Wizard Hat:

Step 1:

Start by making your cone. Connect a string to a pencil and hold the string at the bottom corner of the contact paper. Pull the string tight and draw a curve from one side of the contact paper to the other side. This cone shape will be the height of your hat, so plan accordingly. If you make it too tall, you can always trim it later. 

Here is another shot of this step. Also, cut out your cone piece when finished making your curve. 

Step 2:

Next you will size up the cone on your child’s head. Wrap the cone around his or her head and secure with a paperclip so the cone keeps it’s size. 

*No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you! The rest of the steps will have the blue contact paper print:) 

Step 3:

Cut off the excess contact paper, so it doesn’t overlap. This step was a bit clumsy. I found it easiest to paperclip the contact paper (as stated above) and flatten it out a bit to draw the line for you to cut.

Step 4: 

Now you will make the other side of the cone. This side will seal in the leaves. 

To make this side, flip over the first side of the cone you made and trace it on the contact paper roll. Notice the cut cone is print side down and the other piece is print side up. This will ensure your unique sides will match together when you seal the leaves.

The lines don’t have to be perfect when tracing. You can just trim any excess contact paper later. 

Step 5: 

Now it’s time to decorate your cone! We used leaves that we gathered from our yard. I pressed them in a book for about 3 hours just to flatten them out a bit. 

My boys loved helping with this step. Slowly peel the backing from your contact paper, lay it sticky side up, and start sticking your leaves! 

Step 6:

Now match up the other side of the cone to seal the leaves. This can be a little tricky and I suggest having a second set of hands to help you with this step. Just go slow and start on one side of the cone. My husband held the other side of the contact paper in the air, while I started at the top right corner of the cone. 

Try to push out air bubbles as you go, but many of them can be pressed out when the cone is complete. Contact paper is pretty easy to peel back if you need to make minor adjustments as you go. I had to peal the contact paper once to readjust it and I tore a leaf. If this happens to you, just peal as much of the leaf off as possible and put a different leaf (but same color) in it’s place. You could’t see the mistake with this simple fix!

Once this was finished, I made my cone shape and stapled it together towards the bottom of the cone and put a little tape at the top. 

You can stop here if you are making a wizard hat! Your wizard hat is complete!

Step 7: 

Continue to the following steps if you are making a DIY witch hat! Cut short fringes of about 1 inch apart along the entire base of the cone.

Step 8:

Peel apart the contact paper tabs and cut the top tab. I cut the piece that was in my fingers, picture below. This tab will secure the cone to the brim.

Repeat for all tabs. 

Step 9:

Use your compass to make a large circle for the brim of the hat. You can always trim it down later if it’s too big. I opened my compass as far as it would go to make my circle. Make 2 circles right away and cut them out.

Step 10:

Fan out the sticky tabs  and measure the diameter of the hat. 

Step 11:

Divide the diameter by 2 and you have your radius. I open my compass to about 3 inches and drew a circle with the compass. I stacked my two brims together and cut out the center hole at the same time, so the hole would be in the same spot on both brims. 

Step 12:

Slowly peel back your brim, sticky side up and decorate it with leaves! I asked my husband to helped me place the other piece of contact paper on top to seal in the leaves. You can see it isn’t perfect, but I trimmed the excess contact paper and it turned out great!

Step 13:

Place your brim over the cone and stick the tabs to the cone! You are all finished! The brim is a little floppy and looks super cute. 

This looks adorable on a child or adult! 

We brought our hat to the beach and I placed it on an orange bucket. This would also look cute on a jack-o-lantern! But bring it in on rainy or windy days, it won’t hold up if you keep it outdoors all the time. 

Pin it and save it for later!

I hope you give this beautiful DIY witch hat a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Need more leaf craft ideas?! Check out:

Stunning Leaf Lanterns

Adorable Bat Nature Craft

The post Leaf Witch or Wizard Hat for Halloween appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

Here’s a fun and easy fall or Halloween craft that also encourages fine motor skills! Fine motor activities are great for developing and strengthening those smaller finger movements which will help your little ones when they are ready to start writing.   

You can also try this spider web activity if you are studying spiders with your kids. Whatever the reason, this one turns out beautiful each and every time! 

Get outside and try this today!

Ready to give it a try!? Here’s what you’ll need..

Supplies:

• A piece of cardboard
• Twine
• Paper punch
• Spider
• Pieces of nature

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

RELATED: Check out 50+ Beautiful Fall Nature-Inspired Books for Kids

Here’s How to Make Your Spider Web Activity Board:

Step 1:

Cut out a piece of cardboard. You can cut it in a circular shape to make it look more like a spider web, or stick with a simple rectangle. 

Next, use a paper punch to make holes on the perimeter of your piece of cardboard. 

Step 2: 

Tie a knot on the back of the board to secure your piece of twine or string. 

Step 3: 

Create the web by threading the twine through the paper punched holes. Make sure to pull the twine to keep it tight on the board. 

When you are all finished making your web, tie it on the back of the board.

Add a spider and you are ready for weaving! If you don’t have a spider, you can always draw one on the board. 

Now for the REALLY fun part! Head to your yard and search for different objects to weave into your web. Since we are in between seasons, we found a wide variety of nature to weave. 

We talked about the different colors, textures, and names of the pieces of nature.  We also discussed which objects were easiest to weave. This spider web activity is SO pretty!

When you are finished, you can either press your pieces of nature on the board or remove the pieces of nature and reuse the board another day!

Pin it and save it for later!

I hope you give this simple spider web activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love this one.

∼Tara

Need more cardboard nature crafts ideas?! Check out:

Easy Porcupine Nature Craft

Sunflower Seed Sweep {3 Fine Motor Activities}

The post Spider Web Nature Weaving Activity appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

We love this sweeping activity so much that we’ve done it with leaves, pine needles, flower petals, and bird seed! 

Check out the end of the post where I share two new ways to use this activity board. 

Ready to give these sunflower activities a try?! Here’s what you’ll need..

Supplies:

• Sunflower Seeds
• Black Beans if allergic to sunflower seeds
• Box lid
• Markers
• Paintbrushes

Optional:

• Tweezers
• Glue

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RELATED: Check out Rainbow Flower Threading Board

Here’s What We Did:

Step 1:

First, find a cardboard box lid and draw a sunflower outline on the inside part of the lid. This can be as basic or detailed at you want it to be. I searched “how to draw a sunflower” on Pinterest and just followed the instructions step by step!

Step 2:

Spread your sunflower seeds around your sunflower. I rinsed the salt off of the sunflower seeds and let them dry first because I didn’t want a salty/powdery residue on the box. 

*If you are working with a classroom of kids or your child has a sunflower allergy, try dried black beans! They look similar and have the same effect.*

Sunflower Activity 1:

Now you are all set to invite your child to sweep the seeds into the sunflower’s head. This is a fun way to work on pencil grip and strengthen those fine motor muscles. Activities like this help prepare your child to hold a pencil correctly and write properly! 

Children also love the challenge of sweeping the seeds into one spot. It’s more difficult than you would think and will keep your little one busy for a while!

This activity helps children make the connection that sunflower seeds grow in the head of the sunflower and will also help them identify the seeds in the future!

It looks so cute when complete!

Sunflower Activity 2:

Ok, I know what you are thinking…this is adorable and I want more sunflower activities!

Here is another idea:

You can also place the seeds in the sunflower head and invite your child to tweeze the seeds out! This is another great fine motor activity and fun way to pluck the sunflower seeds. I used less seeds for this activity than the sweeping option. It seemed a bit overwhelming and the tweezers take much longer to use. 

This activity is a new favorite in our house!

Sunflower Activity 3:

Try turning this into a permanent piece of art! After trying the other sunflower activities, you can glue the seeds in place and hang it on your wall! Kids will love squeezing the glue bottle and can use the tweezers or their fingers to put the seeds on the sunflower head. 

My little guy was proud of his work!

Pin this activity to save it for later!

I hope you give these sunflower activities a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Looking for more easy fine motor activity ideas?! Check out:

A Simple Butterfly Symmetry Activity

Double-Sided Nature Crown Board

The post Sunflower Seed Sweep {3 Fine Motor Activities} appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

My boys attend several Halloween parties every year and each time they come home with a bunch of little Halloween toys, stickers and other party favors that quite honestly I just want to throw away so I don’t end up stepping on them five minutes later!

But then I calm down and think I might as well put them to good use. So here I am brainstorming some fun ways to reuse these little trinkets in thoughtful and playful ways.

Here is an idea for all of those little plastic toys you will soon have:

FREEZE THEM in ice molds and invite your children to “free” the spiders, witch fingers or in this case…….monster eyeballs!

All of a sudden those boring toys are transformed into a simple and fun activity that will keep your children entertained for a loooooong time!

Here’s what you’ll need…

Supplies:

• Fine motor tools– We’ve collected a bunch of tools over the years but this is our favorite set.
• Bin- We did not use the best bin for this activity. I suggest using a larger bin! Trust be on this one.
• Monster eyeballs
• Sphere Ice Mold– If you go with the monster eyeballs, you’ll need an extra large mold to accommodate the eyes so I suggest this one!
• Toothpick

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RELATED: Check out A Halloween Sticker Activity

Here’s What We Did:

Step 1:

Put the eyes in the sphere ice molds, put the black cover on and fill it with water.

PAY ATTENTION HERE! Make sure you push the eyes down with a toothpick so water can fill all around the eye. I made the mistake of not doing this the first time and the eyes were blocking the water from filling up the whole mold.

Once you see the water spilling out of the top of the ice mold, use a toothpick to move the red part of the eye to the center of the mold so you can see it through the tiny hole. I also made this mistake with my first round of frozen eyes and you could only see the green part.

Step 2:

Now freeze and repeat the process as many times as you would like. Plan ahead if you want to make multiple batches!

You might notice they are slightly cracked and not covering the entire eye when you pop them out of the mold. I thought it looked cool and added to the spookiness of the activity.

Step 3:

Transport them to your sensory spot. I didn’t put them on the tray just yet because I didn’t want them to roll around and break so I put them in a smaller bucket. Turns out they are pretty tough!

Step 4:

Set up your activity. I put out the frozen monster eyeballs, fine motor tools and some warm water to help with the melting process.

My boys got right to work and Leo suggested that I get the ice mold so he could set the eyeballs in it with warm water. Smart boy!

They love experimenting with the fine motor tools! First up, use your hand eye coordination to try to capture the eyeballs.

You can also try to pick the eyeballs out with the tweezers!

The twisty water droppers are always the favorite! They got a kick out of squirting water on the eyeballs:)

At this part of the activity, I was wishing I had a larger sensory container because water was spilling out of the sides. Lesson learned!

Finally success! It took my boys about 45 minutes to unfreeze all of the eyes. They were engaged and having fun the whole time!

Once the ice is melted and the eyeballs are floating in the water, you can get out strainers, ladles and other kitchen supplies to make eyeball stew or you can just call it a day!

Pin it to save it for later!

I hope you give this spooky activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Need more fall ideas?! Check out:

The Cutest No-Carve Pumpkin Design

Glow-in-the-Dark Mummy Hiking Stick

Hands-On Ways to Retell Room on the Broom

Check out another way we used these extra large sphere ice molds:

Icy Flower Sensory Play

The post Icy Monster Eyeball Sensory Play appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

This is one of those activities that exceeded my expectations. It gives children the opportunity to learn, play, and create with nature all in one activity!

It’s simple, beautiful, engaging, and totally doable for young kids. Another great feature, the double sided tape makes it easy to peel off the leaves for endless leaf crown creations!

Supplies:

• Double sided tape
• Large roll of paper
• Markers– I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again-These markers are the BEST!
• Tape
• Leaves

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Here’s What We Did:

First I drew the faces on the paper. I searched simple face clip art pictures and literally copied it. I used the same face design for all three pictures but switched up the hairstyles to make them look different. I have zero artistic abilities and found this pretty easy! They aren’t perfect and guess what?! My kids didn’t mind one bit:)

Next I put the double sided tape across the foreheads. I put one piece of tape on each face, but I think next time I will add one more strip above that piece to make it a little thicker.

Take into consideration the eyes when placing your tape on the forehead. Make sure the tape is high enough so you don’t have stems dangling in the eyes.

Finally, choose a spot for your activity. We set ours up outdoors, but this could easily be an indoor activity as well. You will just need to collect your leaves before hand.

Now you’re ready for the fun!

I set this up when Leo was indoors so he was excited as we walked closer to the faces. He started naming them and commenting on how “cool” this looks! I told him he’ll make leaf crowns for them and he was soooo excited to get started.

We used a mixture of leaves from our beeswax leaf stash and also collected some fresh ones once we were outside.

I showed him how to press the leaves on the strip of double sided tape. This was great fine motor work! He had to press a little harder on the beeswax preserved leaves to get them to stick but they worked just fine and looked so beautiful! Their colors are really holding up and they didn’t curl at all, making them perfect for all of our fall leaf activities. I tested the beeswax leaves the night before trying this activity with my boys and they stuck to the paper overnight!

This during this activity we identified leaves, talked about leaf colors and sizes, and made leaf patterns! So many opportunities for learning!

I think the best part of this activity is that you can EASILY peel the leaves right off the double sided tape and start all over again! Leo started looking around the yard and grabbed some willow leaves to try for his second round of leaf crowns. And then looked for more leaves and did a third round.

He was busy with this for about thirty minutes and only went in because it was dinner time. We brought the paper inside and already have it taped to the wall for more leaf crown creations!

Pin this activity to save it for later!

I hope you give this simple fall activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Need more leaf ideas?! Check out:

A Simple Leaf Activity to Try Today

How to Preserve Fall Leaves with Beeswax

The post A Simple Fall Leaf Crown Activity (you can do over and over again) appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

This leaf activity is inspired by A Simple Stone Activity to Try Today! It was a crowd favorite so I thought I’d share a new way to try this activity.

Who doesn’t love fall?! The pumpkins, cooler weather, bonfires, Halloween, and those lovely fall leaves get me every time! We love collecting and crafting with them, but making games with leaves is a new idea for us.

I hope you love this nature activity as much as we do! Check it out below.

Supplies:

• Paper- We use Melissa and Doug easel paper
• Leaves- Go on a leaf hunt and collect a variety of leaves (We found our leaves the evening before and pressed them in a book in between pieces of wax paper to keep them flat.)
• Marker
• Painter’s Tape

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

Here’s How To Set Up The Leaf Activity:

Step 1:

I got out my large roll of white paper and taped it to a chest we have in our living room. I placed the leaves in the middle of our paper as a focal point.

Step 2:

I outlined the leaves. I chose a wide variety of leaves to make it easier to find the match. First I outlined each leaf with pencil. This outline doesn’t need to be perfect. Just make sure you get the basic shape of the leaf. When complete, this step looks like a lot of work but it took me about 5 minutes at most!

Here’s a tip: If you are working with children that get frustrated easily, you might want to consider marking the side of the leaf that faces down to make the activity a little easier and this also helps children self correct. 

Then I went over the pencil line with a Sharpie.

You can also identify and label the leaves on the paper at this point! This will turn it into a beautiful leaf identification chart.

If you have a few similar leaves, you might want to consider taking a photo of the leaves in their outline, so you remember where everything belongs on the matching mat later.

Our leaves were all pretty unique!

Step 3:

For the simple stone activity, I modeled how to match up the stones first. I decided to skip this step for the leaf game because my boys were already familiar with the activity. I also think the leaves are a little more self explanatory because their shapes are all so unique.

My boys compared the leaves and discussed the leaf details when matching the shapes!

I have to say, this looks more like a piece of art than a learning activity when finished! And not only is this leaf activity gorgeous, but it’s fun and educational. When we were finished, my boys identified as many leaves as they could and used our leaf identification app for the unknown leaves.

My boys returned to this leaf activity several times throughout the day and I’m already planning a follow-up activity for these beautiful leaf outlines! Stay tuned….

Pin this activity to save it for later!

I hope you give this simple leaf activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Need more fall nature activities?! Check out:

Giant Cut and Reveal- Scissors Skills Practice for Fall

Nature Collection Journal for Kids

The post A Simple Leaf Activity to Try Today! appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

Halloween will be here before we know it.  If I don’t plan early, time will slip away with nothing fun or special planned for one of our favorite days of the year! I don’t want that to happen to you, so here is a fun and SIMPLE idea to try this fall.

I promise, this hiking stick will provide hours of entertainment for your kids!

Let’s get to it-

Supplies:

• Glow-in-the-dark tape– This tape is the perfect width and sticks really well!
• Glow-in-the-dark googly eyes– These were also perfect! They are peel and stick, so no glue required.
• Scissors
• Hiking stick- Get outside and find one;)

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

RELATED: Check out these GLOW-IN-THE-DARK MUMMY ROCKS

How to Make this Simple Halloween Mummy Craft:

There’s really nothing to it, but here are a few tips depending upon the ages of your children.

Step 1:

Cut the strips of tape and wrap it around the hiking stick.

I gave my six year old strips of tape that were about 8 inches long. I had to unpeel the tape backing for both of my boys because it was a little tricky.

First I modeled how to wrap the tape around the stick, showing how to twist it on the stick and flatten the tape as I went. Then he had his chance to try it out.

I helped him criss-cross the tape to give it the mummy effect and he was excited to stick the eyeballs on the tape when we were finished!

Leo is only four, so I gave him more manageable strips of tape. I cut them just big enough to fit around the stick and I helped him by twisting longer pieces around the stick. This was great fine motor work for both of my boys!

Again, he was so excited to add the eyeballs! Just peel the backing off and stick them on. I think they turned out pretty cute with just the right amount of spooky.

We charged our glow-in-the-dark hiking sticks in the sun for about 30 minutes to make them super bright. Leo was the first one to test them out in the bathroom with me and we couldn’t believe how BRIGHT they were!

My boys brought them outside that evening and played with them until it was bedtime. We’re already planning a night hike for this weekend and are excited to see them shinning bright at our favorite nature center!

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Save it for later and Pin it!

I hope you give this spooky activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Need more fall ideas?! Check out:

50 Beautiful Fall Nature-Inspired Books for Kids

Hands-On Ways to Retell Room on the Broom

The post Glow-in-the-Dark Mummy Hiking Stick appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

Recently I teamed up with four amazing bloggers to share crafts and activities to go along with the book Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson. I decided to focus on the skill of story retelling through sequencing. Story sequencing is one of the many skills that contributes to children’s ability to comprehend what they read. When presented in a hands-on way, children are more engaged in their learning and retain more information! Below you will find two ways to retell the story along with convenient Room on the Broom printables to make these activities low-prep and easy to make.

Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for this Room on the Broom printable pack! The pack includes the clothespin characters, story stone pictures, a story mat with character cards, cut and paste story sequencing sheets, retell puzzle pieces and a potion sheet!

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Story Stones

The first activity on our list was story stones! I have made story stones in the past by drawing pictures on stones but it took me way to long, so this time around I decided to find cute graphics instead. These graphics are the perfect size for stones! Follow these simple steps to make your own set:

1. My boys painted five stones black and waited for them to dry.
2. I cut out the graphics.
3. We used Mod Podge to glue and seal the graphics onto the stones.

They turned out so cute and my boys loved playing with them in different ways. They made a broomstick out of sticks and pipe cleaners and then balanced the stones on the broomstick as they retold the story.

My four year old also tried to stack the stones in the order that the characters got on the broomstick and recreated the muddy beast scene by stacking the stones in heaps. My two year old got in on the action by covering the beast with the black beans in our sensory box!

Clothespin Characters

We also retold the story using these adorable clothespin characters. You can make these storytelling props by following these simple steps:

1. Cut out the five clothespin characters from the Room on the Broom printable pack. I suggest copying on cardstock and laminating for long term use.
2. Glue them onto clothespins.

My boys had so much fun with these! We searched our yard for a stick and clipped the clothespins in the order the characters got on the broomstick. We stayed outside and cruised the broomstick around the yard! This was a fun way to burn extra energy!

If you love these ideas, you MUST check out these awesome activities for Room on the Broom!

Beth from Days with Grey shares this fun craftivity! Website and  Instagram

Ludavia from The Mama Workshop shares these adorable witch hat and wand crafts! Website and Instagram

Alison from Yoga Pants and Pearls shares this brilliant broomstick painting craft with pasta! Website and Instagram

Ashley from Veggies and Virtue shares this creative and healthy snackivity! Website and Instagram

I hope you love the Room on the Broom printables ideas! I promise, your little nature lovers will love this nature craft as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Need more fall ideas?! Check out:

How to Preserve Fall Leaves With Beeswax

12 Low-Prep Fall Keepsakes

The post Hands-On Ways to Retell “Room on the Broom” appeared first on Little Pine Learners.