When my daughter was young, we used to have fun in the weeks leading up to the holidays, in making decorations, little sculptures and colorful flourishes from the things we found in nature. We would dig our own clay from a local deposit and make little models, which we got fired locally. The ones that didn’t explode, turned out pretty well. In fact thirty years later, we still have some of them.
One of the things we enjoyed doing was to go on nature walks, gathering anything that took our interest. Then we’d gather and bring back all sorts of natural items and make stuff with them. We inevitably dressed up half the gifts with little bouquets and arrangements of dried flowers, seed pods and sprigs of evergreen - some with berries or little cones. We would use the tops of the Phragmites or Pampas Grass and the dried tops of plants.
The woods, fields and marshes are full of potential materials for making decorative elements whether small or large. Acorns, berries, husks, dried fungus, in fact, almost anything can be used as part of a decorative creation, with a little bit of glue, wire and imagination.
A couple of years ago, I set up a workspace in the Hobbit hole (forager’s man cave), where we gathered all the things we needed to have a fun time with our friends, glueing stuff together. The outcome was a lot of really pretty decorations, to help celebrate the season.
Apart from some hot glue, ribbon and some glitter, all that went to make up the finished items was found in nature. In other words, this can be a fun activity for kids with very little expense.