Back-to-school is here again and KinderCare Learning Center’s 2015 back-to-school campaign, Adventure Ahead, is welcoming families with its excellent care and education. KinderCare Learning Center seeks to encourage curiosity in all young children to help them develop a lifelong zest for learning!
The Adventure Ahead campaign shares wonderful content to help parents get children ages 3 through 5 ready for preschool. When it’s time to send your children out of the home for their care and learning, you want the best of the best. I want my children to be with people that I know will care for them in a way as similar as possible to my own parenting. This means that I’m particularly delighted to know that crafts and activities that we can enjoy here at home are the types of things encourage at KinderCare.
KinderCare shared with me a very entertaining craft project that helps to nurture creativity, curiosity, nature exploration, and family bonding too! My kids are aged from 2 to 7 and with parenting guidance, all four of them loved this craft (the older two were in a more photogenic mood!). I hadn’t thought of it before and it’s such a neat way to keep some of these beautiful flowers we grow in the yard that just wilt away! My children loved the search for nature to keep safely in their new placemats and it was wonderful to watch how creative they were as they colored the outside of the frames, which was a little extra thing I let them do since we used white poster board instead of construction paper.
DIY Nature Place Mats
Meals are even more fun when you eat on place mats created by your kids. Making them at home is a super easy project that takes less than an hour to complete!
Whether you’re planning for a big dinner party or simply thinking of your many family meals together ahead, break out this fun activity so that your child feels like she is an important part of the process. Using contact paper, construction paper, and a little help from Mother Nature, these homemade place mats add a wonderful note of spring joy to the table.
What You Will Need:
• Clear contact paper
• 12-in x 18-in construction paper (or any other larger size)
• Flower petals in various colors
• Leaves in various shapes and sizesDirections:
1. Hunt for natural objects that can be easily flattened like flower petals
2. Create the frames by cutting a rectangle out of the center of each
3. Place one sheet of contact paper over a frame and set the combined
4. Encourage your child to design their place mat by artfully arranging the
5. Place the second sheet of contact paper face down to seal in the
Pro-tip: The flatter the items, the fewer air pockets you’ll have in the end. When laying down the second sheet of contact paper, work from one edge to the other, slowly pressing it down so you can work out air bubbles as you go.
Our favorite part of creating these place mats is finding the perfect flower petals, leaves, and stalks of grass to showcase. Feeling rustic? Gather some wheat if available. Want to host a tea party for forest fairies? Pick some large green leaves.
When you consider looking into child care settings, it’s important to look at the curriculum and activities being done with your little ones. Choose the most fun, the most enriching setting that will prepare them for the next level. KinderCare is nearing its goal of 100% accreditation for all of its eligible centers, which is a mark of excellence awarded, ensuring that a center is attaining the nation’s highest standards of care, education, and learning! If you’re looking to give your children the absolute best, give KinderCare a look!
Learn more about KinderCare and find more awesome activities from the Adventure Ahead campaign by going to adventureahead.kindercare.com.
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*Tiffany received compensation for the above post. All opinions are those of reviewer only.
24 Responses
My kids throughout the years have had to collect leaves for many things but they never made a placemat. This is so cool
Love that idea. Can make place mats for different holidays, occasions, by changing what you put inside them: Putting the kid’s Valentine’s day cards for Valentine’s day in them, paper colored eggs for Easter. Fun.
what fun,my grandkids love making things with their hands
These really cute homemade placemats are adorable and fun to make. I know my niece and nephew would have a blast making these. We will have to do this craft project! Thanks for the idea!
These are awesome! I used to do something similar with my daughter, a different one for each season. The winter one was a bit challenging – we always ended up cutting out snowflakes!
These are so cool!
What a creative idea. My kids would like making these.
What a wonderful and creative idea!
Very creative what a great ideal..beautiful ladies!
My son loves to collect leaves and we have done different projects with them, but never a place mat…what a great idea! And your girl’s place mats came out so well. I will definitely do this with my son, thank you for the great idea! He will LOVE this.
This is such a creative idea. I am going to try these with my children this weekend!
Looks so cool! I like this idea
What a creative way to learn all about the different p;ants and flowers that the collected
KinderCare sounds like a great start to school. It prepares children for separation from parents and makes the learning experience fun and not scary.
Looks like too much work to me but my DIL is a 1st grade teacher and would love this
That looks like a super fun activity!
What a really cute DIY placemat idea for the fall! I for a minute taught a music class at Kindercare!
What a great idea for getting chilfren to learn about nature. I would never have thought about creating a placemat.
Kids are so proud of their work!
I like how easy this is. I also love how kids can design these themselves without much effort. It looks like the kids had a great tme!
What a cool project to do with my grandsons! With the Fall leaves and colors we have here in New England soon, it will be lots of fun to try this.
I think these placemats are adorable.
When I was a kid, we use to make these kind of placements & totally forgot about them. I would love to do these with my grandkids.
So creative!
Thanks for sharing!