"I'm Thankful For" Nature Weaving Craft

Celebrate the beauty of the season and gratitude with this nature-centered activity. As children work with the materials, they build fine motor skills and develop print concepts while making something lovely to share with family and friends.

Grade/Age: Preschool or Kindergarten

Target Learning Skills:

Children understand that words are made up of letters
Children acquire phonetic knowledge as they write
Children organize ideas relevant to a topic
Children use writing to communicate

Common Core Language Arts Standards:

CC.K.RF.1b Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.
CC.K.W.3 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

Prepare a paper plate weaving loom for each child by either cutting out the center of each paper plate and making small notches around the edges or by using an X-acto knife to cut vertical strips from the center of each plate to make a loom from the plate’s own material. Give children time to paint their looms brown.

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

If using the paper plate looms with notches around the edges, have children wrap yarn, string, or twine vertically and horizontally across the centers of their plates using the notches to secure it in place. Use a few dabs of glue to secure the notched ends in place. If children are not yet developmentally ready to wrap the plates themselves, ask a parent volunteer to prepare this part of the project for them.

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Take children on a short nature walk around the neighborhood or playground to collect items that can be woven or placed into or between the spaces of their paper plate looms. Good things to collect are sticks, twigs, pinecones, seed pods, dried flowers on stems, pine needles, colored leaves, etc.

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Give children time to weave/place nature items in their paper plate looms. Show them how to weave by using an over/under motion to secure twigs, pine needles, flowers on stems, etc., but allow them to use their own techniques as well to create their designs.

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Give each child a set of Thankful Leaves to cut out. Have them write things that they are thankful for on four or five of the blank leaves. Show them how to glue the leaves marked with the words “I’m,” “thankful,” and “for” along the tops of their weavings and the leaves that state what they are thankful for along the bottoms.