Easy Nature Stick Crafts and activities for kids

Sticks are free, easy and plentiful to find and have so many possibilities! A stick, to a child, can be anything! Sticks can entertain kids and provide fun easy nature crafts to make. Stick crafts and activities are great for keeping kids entertained on a long walk or perfect for playing in the park. We gathered our favourite stick crafts and activities that creative kids will love – these stick crafts make great forest school activities too and a fun way to inspire kids on a nature walk! Most of these natural art projects are easy to make and all encourage imaginative play with minimal craft supplies.

Easy Nature Stick Crafts for kids

Make a Stick Nature Boat

If you’re out adventuring near a river, try making a nature boat out of little twigs and sticks. Kids of all ages will love this activity. It’s great for developing fine motor skills but older kids will also love thinking up fun ideas for their boat! You can make it as a raft and set your kids. The challenge of seeing if it can float holding something? Or you can make a little boat and use the largest stick with a piece of material for a sail. Check out how we made our nature boats here.

Nature Mobile 

This is a creative way to use natural items for a display! Find two sticks of similar length, paint the sticks and then tie them together by the middle. Add long pieces of string in varying lengths and tie on flowers, leaves, shells or any other beautiful nature items your kids would like to display!

Make a Stick Clay Hedgehog

Use the sticks or little twigs to make the hedgehogs prickles! A cute nature craft that young kids will love! 

Stick Nature Crafts for Kids

Stick Nature Butterfly 

This is a great Nature Craft and process art combined. Find out here how to make a Nature Stick Butterfly. It’s one of the fun nature crafts that my kids have made over and over again!

Make a Stick Picture Frame 

A good way to practise knot tying or square lashing is to make a stick picture frame. You could use your frame to display a photo of the whole family on an adventure in the great outdoors!

Make a Nature Drum

A great stick nature activity for toddlers! This one is a fun activity for kids that love making a noise! Use a plastic tub or a tin. Add pebbles or little twigs and cover tightly with greaseproof paper held tight with an elastic band. Take some small sticks of equal lengths to be your drumsticks and bang to your heart’s content!

Make Stick Instruments

This is one of my kids favourite things to do! Get some Y shaped sticks or sticks with a fork. You’ll need some thick wire and craft buttons and craft bells for this nature craft. Wrap one end of the wire around one side of the stick, make sure any pointed ends are tucked away. Thread your buttons onto the wire and then wrap the other end around the other side of the stick to keep the bells and buttons in place.

Stick String Art

These are easy stick ornaments using string. Collect some twigs and then tie them together into triangles with baker’s twine. Then use coloured wool or embroidery thread to wrap around to make a pretty stick ornament. Check out this post by Pink Stripy Socks for more information on how to make.

Nature Activities for Kids to do with Sticks

Stick Crafts for Toddlers

Try these simple stick crafts that even toddlers can make with their collection of sticks and natural objects.

Paint a Stick

Sticks can be surprisingly beautiful when painted, if you want your pink colour to remain bright and waterproof, then you want to use acrylic paint.

Spectacular Stick Crafts for Kids to Make

Make Nature Paint brushes

Painting does not have to be done with paintbrushes! Head out on the walk and challenge your kids to find different nature items of different textures that can be used as a brush! Leaves, catkins, thick, grass, sycamore, flower petals, seeds, pine needles and small, twigs, bracken or fern make great brushes for painting with! We also have seven great ideas for painting with kids here. 

Nature Stick Crown

This is a simple nature craft for young children. Decorate a strip of cardboard with small twigs and leaves and nature treasure to make a nature stick crown fit for princes and princesses! 

For more of our favourite nature crafts for kids – check out our post of 100 Nature Crafts for Kids of all ages!

Easy Nature Stick Activities for kids

Stick Shapes

If your kids are learning, letters or numbers, why not try and spell out their name or do sums with sticks!

Check out this post for more English and Maths nature learning ideas with natural materials! 

Make a Flag

Make a stick flag to mark your den or the best part is to use it to play one of our favourite fun outdoor games – capture the flag! Check out our favourite outdoor games of kids here!

Stick Weaving

This is a good nature craft and one of our easy ideas for older kids. You’ll need a forked stick or a stick frame (see above for how to make a stick frame.) Use ribbon, thread or wool to weave between your sticks, alternatively you can use nature materials like reeds and leaves to weave.

Pom Pom stick craft

If you have some sticks and some pretty coloured wool, you can make this stunning stick, pom-pom mobile craft – it would look great in any kids bedroom window. This lovely idea is from the ladybirds adventures find out all the details how to make it in the link above.

Stick Crafts for Older Kids

Although young kids are really imaginative when it comes to playing with sticks, sticks can still be fun for older kids too. See our ideas below for Easy Nature Stick Crafts and Activities for kids and if you have teens or tweens you’ll love our list of outdoor activities, that will get teenagers of screens and outdoors!

Make a Catapult

This is probably a stick activity best for a local park to make sure there is lots of space around you and no-one gets hurt. Try these ideas for making a stick catapult.

Whittling  

Whittling makes a fun art project. Whittling is a great stick craft for older kids. You can always start off with a vegetable peeler on a stick to practise. Here is a good article which explains the process of how to whittle for kids.

Make a Campfire 

Definitely a stick activity for older kids when adults around! But our kids love making a campfire and baking bread, or toasting marshmallows on a stick! You can find loads of other ideas for things that kids can cook outdoors here.

Fun things to do with Sticks

Build a Bug Hotel

If your kids are like mine and always collecting sticks, you only need a few more materials and you can make a bug house or bug hotel. This is the perfect way to use up lots of sticks you might have lying around. You’ll need some bricks, leaves, sticks, twigs and quiet, undisturbed part of the garden, wood or park. Pile up the sticks and bricks, padding holes with moss or grass and leave to see if bugs make it their home! Find how to build a bug hotel here.

Stick Activities for Kids

Try these stick activities for families when out on a walk or when visiting the woods with kids. Here’s more fun games to play in a woods with kids!

Games to play with sticks for kids

Pooh Sticks

Pooh sticks is a classic game for kids, it’s a great way to keep kids having fun on a long walk. (Read our other ideas to keep kids happy on a long walk here). To play find an identifiable stick and a bridge over water. The kids throw their stick over one side of the bridge and ran to the other side of the bridge to see who stick appears first! Very simple but the kids will love this fun game.

Make a Den

Kids love making dens. Try making a den with sticks and then having a picnic inside! See all our top tips here for building a den with kids. This is a great den building guide with lots of top tips. 

Ladder Sticks

To play – Two players or teams lay down 10 sticks like the rungs of a ladder. Then two players hop over each stick on one leg without touching the stick or putting down the second foot. After hopping over all 10 sticks, they turn around and pick up the stick nearest them, then hop back. This continues until one player is eliminated by knocking a stick with their foot, putting their second foot on the ground, or by being last to finish. You can also play this as a relay and see how long it takes to run up and down the sticks as quick as you can! Try our games to play outside with teenagers here!

Journey Sticks

Journey sticks were originally used by Aborigines and Native Americans to share stories from places they’ve travelled. Try making a journey stick collecting together nature items you find on your walk. Find more information here about making a journey stick. 

Make a Wreath

Older kids will love this stick and twig craft to make – collect together bendy sticks – vine twigs are ideal and twirl and weave them together here. We’ve made a Spring Wreath and a Christmas wreath to give you some ideas here. 

Make a Bird’s Nest

Making a birds nest is a great winter nature craft to try. Collect together lots of little twigs along with some feathers or leaves and see if you can wave them together to make a nest. It’s harder than you think! 

Make a Stick Maze

Our kids love collecting larger sticks and making a maze for their brothers and sisters to follow.

We have more different nature craft ideas in our most popular post here.

Hope this collection of nature crafts and activities help inspire your kids to have a love of nature! If you loved these ideas – check out our printable Nature Adventure Journal with lots more ideas for getting kids outdoors!

*This Post contains Affiliate Links which means I may make a small commission if you click on the links. It doesn’t cost you any more though and I only recommend products I genuinely love! All thoughts, words and photos are completely my own unless stated*