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Hapa Zome – A fun flower craft for Spring

nature crafts for kids

Over the Spring half term, whilst we were playing out in the garden looking for something to do, we gave Hapa Zome a whirl. Hapa Zome is the Japanese term for beating (or tapping really) leaves or flowers with hammers,  pounding their natural pigment into cloth. Hapa Zome is essentially just banging a stone on some flowers or leaves to make a print pattern, although you could use a hammer if you wanted! The kids had a lot of fun with it and it was also a practically no set up fun Spring Flower Craft for them to try. Read here for more Spring Nature Crafts ideas for kids.

nature crafts for kids

All you need is some flowers, leaves, some cotton fabric or calico (slightly thicker fabric works best). You place the flowers and leave between two pieces of fabric or by folding the cloth in half with the leaf  or petal inside you will get a mirror image, which is great for teaching symmetry to little ones. Once the leaves and petals are under the cloth then it is a matter of gently pounding it with a hammer or a stone on a smooth surface to make sure it imprints. This is a craft that even toddlers can do with some minimal supervision. Our kids had fun choosing the Spring flowers and leaves and arranging them into pretty patterns before pounding away!

It’s worth choosing your flowers and leaves carefully and having a little try first. Juicy thick leaves with veins work quite well. Leaves with pretty patterns such as nettles or ferns also look lovely. With flowers, it’s best to go with small ones – we thought that tulip petals would work for our Spring Flower Craft but it actually made a bit of a mess. we decided these petals were too juicy! It’s also worth leaving a little bit of white space between each flower or leaf so you can see the shape but my kids were not too keen on this idea and just piled up their fabric with things they found – which is just as pretty an effect!

hapa zome
hapa zome

You can set the imprints and maybe use the fabric to turn it into a wall hanging or even an apron or a notebook covering would be pretty. We added our prints to our nature journals. To set the imprints, I just used my iron to steam the fabric but you could use salt water to set the prints – find out how to do that here. 

nature crafts for kids

We ran out of fabric before the kids got bored of this – they could have kept Hapa-zoming for hours! No idea if this is actually a verb but the kids said it as they pounded as it’s a rhythmic phrase so we learnt a teeny tiny bit of Japanese too! I think what they liked was that the results were instant and they liked the transfer of colour. It got them thinking about dyes and how people must have dyed their cloths naturally – natural dyeing of cloth is something we’d like to try and one point we decided!

After they had finished pounding their flowers and leaves – they mixed it all up in a big flower petal potion!

flower petal potion

If you’d like to try another Spring Flower Craft – you could try this way to preserve your flowers by making a Spring flower keyring.

Here’s a little video of our Hapa Zome Spring Flower Craft – hope you’ll give it a try!

Nature Crafts for Kids

Flower Printing Nature Craft

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