Go for a walk with your child to find pretty leaves and pieces of grass. Then, use them to create your very own Nature Placemats.

1. Help your child to sort out the leaves and grass they found.

2. Have your child take broken or old crayons and peel off the wrappers (save bits of paper for later). Place the crayons in a re-sealable bag and have your child crush the crayons with a kitchen mallet or a building block. Once crayons have been crushed into small bits, give your child a small amount (a teaspoon or less) of crayon bits.

3. Take two placemat-size rectangles of wax paper. Your child can place the leaves, grass, crayon wrappers, and crayon bits on the shiny side of one of the pieces. Place the other piece of wax paper, shiny side down, on top of the first.

4. Sandwich the wax paper between two pieces of newspaper. Using warm iron, iron the newspaper for 2 to 3 minutes. Crayons should melt and wax paper will laminate itself together.

• Leaves and grass
• Crayons
• Kitchen mallet or building block
• Re-seable plastic bags
• Wax paper
• Newspaper
• Iron