Sun Suncatcher Craft for Kids

This sun suncatcher craft is an easy craft for kids that looks bright and cheery in your window or doorway.  When I was thinking of a sun craft I could make with my daughters to celebrate the summer solstice I felt like a flower suncatcher was a pretty great way to say hello to summertime!  

Finding yellow and orange flowers was a fun and easy task as our marigolds were blooming and I have a random assortment of pretty yellow flowers scattered around the house.  It would also be a great excuse for a walk in the forest or a park to find some flowers if you don’t have any around your house!  

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These sun catchers are a fun summer craft for kids of all ages! It is a simple craft that requires little preparation, minimal clean up if you do it outside and doesn’t take a long time or much thought.  A perfect craft for busy moms who are just looking to spend some quality time with their kids and create together in the summer sun!

What is the summer solstice?

The summer solstice is also called midsummer and signifies the first day of summer and also the longest day of the year.  The word solstice literally means “sun standing still” and is derived from combining the Latin words sol for “sun” and sistere for “To Stand Still” (Space).  Around the world it is celebrated in different ways from making flower crowns and maypole dancing in Sweden and mountaintop bonfires in Austria (Lonely Planet).  You can check what day of the year it falls on here, so you can be ready to celebrate the beginning of the summer season when the time rolls around next June!

So grab your flower crown, like they do in Sweden,  turn on some happy music and enjoy the sunshine with your kiddos and this fun and easy sun craft 🙂 

Craft Supplies:

• Printed Sun Template (Find Below!)
• Flower petals
• Yellow construction paper – or you can paint cardboard or color plain white paper as well! There is no wrong way 🙂
• Clear contact Paper 

Step-by-Step Instructions for Nature Suncatcher Craft

1) The first thing you will want to do is print out the sun template which you can find at the bottom of the page.  

2) Next cut out the template.  You will want it to look like this with the hole cut out in the center.  This is a great way to practice fine motor skills with younger kids, but they made need some help as cutting out the center circle can be tricky.  

3) Trace the template onto whatever material you are using.  We used a kleenex box and yellow construction paper for ours.  If you want, you can now decorate or paint the material you chose.  It may be easier to paint or color before cutting out, but either way works! We kept ours plain, but my daughter had lots of fun decorating the next ones we made! 

4) Cut out your sun.

5) Cut out a circle of contact paper that fits around the sun’s inner circle.  Take your piece of contact paper and press it onto your sun and set aside. 

6) Now it’s time to find your flowers! We just walked around our house to find ours, but it is a good idea to wait until your sun is ready for the flowers before picking, as they will lose their shape and vibrancy after picking.  If you are using pressed flowers, you don’t have to worry about that!

This was my favorite part of the craft and my kids and I had so much fun as we searched for yellow and orange flowers to represent the sun.  You could use orange and yellow daylilies and tear the large petals into small pieces, marigolds were perfect, dandelions, yellow daisies, there are many choices and it’s a fun way to brush up on flower names and identification!

If you do go looking in an area you are unfamiliar with, make sure to watch out for wild parsnip.

7) Gather your flowers and place them on the sticky side of the contact paper.  You could make a neat mandala design for older kids, or just place them on randomly as you wish! It will be a beautiful suncatcher either way!

My kids loved this part and I loved not having to worry about making a mess and letting them go crazy with decorating however they wanted since we could just sweep the extra flowers right off the deck once we were finished.  

Once they had all of their flowers placed perfectly they were so proud of their beautiful suncatchers and were eager to hang them on our window! They are still there 2 weeks later bringing lots of colorful sunshine into our home and delight every time we walk out the door 🙂