These activities use willow and other sticks or twigs in easy, child-friendly ways to make hats, mobiles and other items. Willow is very versatile; it is easily bent and shaped as long as you collect living, green pieces. You can buy willow for craft work but it is easier, cheaper and more fun to collect it yourself with the children, just be sure that you have permission from the landowner.
Easy kids' hats and headdresses made from willow
This is a fun activity, and willow can be used to create a wide variety of headwear.
Go out and collect the willow and any other materials you might need; ask the children to think about what hats they would like to make. They will need feathers or leaves for Indian style headdresses; twigs, branches and leaves for camouflage helmets and anything else that they can find.
You can sit outside to create if the weather allows, otherwise take everything inside. You will need strings to tie everything together, although with older children you may want to give them the added challenge of managing without.
To make the headwear – the best place to start is to bend a piece of willow into a circle that fits on a child's head. Then secure this with a string or by weaving the two ends around each other. Once this base is made simply add more willow for structure – such as perpendicular pieces to create the cone for a wizards hat – or just start adding decorations like feathers for an Indian style head dress.
Use willow to craft mobiles
Willow makes a great frame for a mobile, as well as being flexible enough to create a variety of shapes for the decorations.
First go out and collect the willow, along with anything else the children find that they want to include in their mobiles. Anything can be used as long as it isn’t too heavy. Encourage the kids to think about whether they want a particular theme or colour scheme, or maybe to match the mobile to the season.
The easiest way to construct the mobile is to start with a circle or a cross of willow and then add to it. It is best to hang the mobile up as it is constructed; the most difficult part of this activity is to balance the mobile and it is far easier to do this if it is hung up.
You can use coloured wool or string to attach decorations, and also to tie willow shapes such as stars or flowers together.
Making willow and tissue paper dragon flies/fish
This activity uses willow to create the frame for colourful dragonflies and fish.
Bend a piece of willow into a raindrop shape with the two ends extended to form a basic fish shape. Glue stripes of coloured tissue paper across the frame work and trim the edges to fit. Add eyes, fins or steamers of tissue paper for a tail. These look lovely hung in front of a window to catch the light.
Dragonflies are made in a similar way, with raindrop shaped willow frames for the wings, and a piece of willow with a circle at one end for the head. Glue the tissue paper to the wings first, then tie the wings onto the body.
The same basic theory can be used to make many other shapes; try butterflies or simply stars, circles and diamonds filled with colourful tissue to hang in the window.
There are many other fun ways of using willow for crafts, encourage the children to experiment!
Joanna McGurk - I am a Business Analyst by profession and also run Natural Play sessions for children at the weekends. I own and live on a smallholding, ...
