By Mel Evans

Yesterday we talked about how much fun you can have hunting for Mini-Beasts. Hopefully you found some and had a really good look at them.

One way we help children reflect on this experience is by trying to recreate some of the creatures we find using clay and natural materials.

We give children a ball of natural air dry clay to make the body of the bug and suggest they search the woods for natural materials to add to it. A pine cone makes a great snail shell, sticks are good for legs, leaves become wings and seeds eyes.

*This Dragonflies wings are made from Eucalyptus bark.*

If you have some clay and a garden you can try this activity, but if you haven’t we have come up with a great alternative using salt dough. Salt dough is simple to make you just mix 2 parts flour with 1 part salt and add water until you get a smooth dough. You don’t have a make very much dough if ingredients are short and we achieved great results with a small ball of dough. We split this in three and made a caterpillar and two ladybirds. We painted them straight away without waiting for the dough to dry and added googly eyes.