Children love collecting pebbles and stones, particularly at the beach but also in the garden. They spend ages looking for perfect shapes or smooth and shiny stones. So much so, that it almost seems a shame to put the pebbles back when they’ve finished.
However, you don’t need to. Why not bring them home and use them in an arts and crafts session? Here are some ideas to use your pretty rocks, stones and pebbles and really fire up your children’s imagination:
Small pebbles can be glued onto strong cardboard or pushed into modelling clay to create either a permanent or temporary picture.
Create an outdoor mosaic with larger stones and rocks by arranging them in the ground or in some sand.
Make a vase out of an old soda bottle by cutting off the top, covering the outside of the bottle with modelling clay and arranging the stones around it.
Larger stones can be painted with non-toxic paint to resemble animals or insects. You can use them as paperweights indoors or as fun garden ornaments outdoors.
Paint people’s names on them and use them for outdoor seating arrangement, they are also useful for keeping napkins and tableclothes from blowing off in the wind.
Collect different sized flat stones and create stone towers, see who can create the largest tower before it topples over.
If you find a particularly pretty stone then polish the stone and have an adult drill a hole at one end, thread through a leather string and wear as a pendant.
Collect 24 similar sized flat stones and paint half a different colour. Use chalk to draw a checkers board on the ground for an outdoor version of the popular game.
Glue pretty small flat stones onto a school bag for embellishment.
Paint intricate designs or emblems on black rocks using gold, silver or white paint pens.
Larger rocks can be painted and used as bookends on a shelf.
Do you have any arts and craft ideas that you could use rocks, stones or pebbles for?
For other ideas to keep children amused over the long summer months why not visit our Nature Gift Store website and see our selection of live animal and insect kits, along with lots of arts and craft projects that are all inspired by nature.
