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The forests are calling! It’s the International Day of Forests this 21st March, and we’re celebrating with a bunch of fascinating forest crafts for kids!

I often feel that with every passing generation, children lose touch with nature more and more. While kids of my grandparents’ generations spent nearly all day outdoors, kids of today spend just a couple of hours or so if they feel like it.

Maintaining a relationship with nature is essential for kids. For one, it gives them an idea of wonders of the natural world, of which they’re also a part. It teaches them the art of co-existing peacefully, how each creature has its own place, as well as how each plant or animal blooms or flies in its own time.

Besides these, the natural world also shows us how dependent we are for many of the things we have taken for granted today. And forests have a big role to play here. With International Day of Forests coming up on 21st March, we think it’s an excellent opportunity to learn about how important forests are, and about all the things we use whose original source is the forest. Let’s go on a virtual forest adventure.

10 Fascinating Forest Crafts for Kids

1. Paper Forest Craft

What’s the main thing in a forest? The trees, of course! Krokotak helps us celebrate the huge diversity of trees in the forest with a simple paper craft featuring trees in different colors. The folding of the base makes this stand upright as well.

2. 3 D Forest Diorama

We thoroughly enjoyed making this 3 D forest diorama, complete with all the vegetation as well as animals – even a monkey swinging high up a vine! Make sure you get good quality printouts so your elements stand out.

3. Simple Felt Forest

Here’s a simple, easy craft project for toddlers. Warm Hot Chocolate gathers felt triangles in different shades of green and arranges them on a plain brown background. This is an open ended project with no right or wrong way to do things!

4. Paper Bag Woodland Animals

If you’d like to have some fun with the animals in the forest, check out these puppets from Look We’re Learning, made from brown paper bags. Great way to put those lunch bags to good use when there’s no school!

5. Printable Woodland Theme Paper Collage

How bright and colorful is this collage! This is a great project for primary school children who’re learning about forests and the various animals found there. They’ll have fun inserting the animals within the collage!

6. DIY Forest Scene

This project from Crafts for Kids is a wonderful used of mixed materials to create a rather lifelike forest, with gorgeous trees. It makes you want to take a trip to the hills, doesn’t it?

7. Magical Forest Craft

We’ve all read stories about enchanted forests and often wished we could visit one in our childhood. While that may not be easy, what you can do is to create your own version of a magic forest, thanks to this project from Painted Paper Art!

8. Forest Animal Crowns

Bring the forest inside your home by gathering your friends and pretending to be different forest animals. Set a time limit, during which you’ll only speak in the language of the animal whose crown you’re wearing!

9. Cardboard Forest

Ukkonooa shows us how you can put together scraps of cardboard leftover from other craft projects to create a beautiful new project, like this cardboard forest.

10. Nocturnal Forest Art

Forests can be a scary place in the dark, especially if cartoons are anything to go by! Pocket of Preschool recreates those cartoons with this absolutely fun and quirky nocturnal forest collage!

These forest crafts for kids are a great way to learn about the role forests play in our ecosystem, and the ways we may be destroying them. Kids will also have fun learning about various facts about forests. Here are a few to get started:

• Over 300 million people live in the forest
• 20% of the Earth’s oxygen is produced by Amazon Forest
• More than 25% of the medicines we use originate in plants from rainforests
• We are losing nearly  6.6 million hectares of forest area per year, mostly due to human activity
• 70% of the world’s animals depends on forests for their homes