What are simple Waldorf crafts for toddlers?

Crafts where the hands do the work and nothing has to come out right. Tearing tissue paper for a lantern, gathering leaves for a rubbing, rolling a ball of wet wool, pressing a flower. A toddler can also watch you make something and help with one step. Ten minutes is plenty.

What are winter Waldorf crafts for children?

Yarn stars wound on two sticks during Advent, paper window stars, rolled or dipped beeswax candles for Candlemas, and small figures modelled from warmed beeswax. Winter crafts tend to be indoor, candlelit and slow, which suits the season.

What are spring Waldorf crafts for children?

Eggs dyed with onion skins or painted over beeswax crayon patterns for Easter, felted flowers, a pot of Easter grass, and flower crowns for May Day. Spring crafts use whatever is starting to grow outside.

What are autumn Waldorf crafts for kids?

Leaf rubbings and leaf pictures, felted wool pumpkins for the harvest festival, a leaf dragon for Michaelmas, and paper or jar lanterns for Martinmas in November. Autumn is often the easiest season, because the walk outside hands you most of the materials.

What materials do you need for Waldorf crafts?

A small stock covers most of the year. You'll want wool roving, sheets of colored beeswax and tissue or kite paper. Add watercolor paper and paints, beeswax crayons, a glue stick, string and good scissors. Add what you find outside: leaves, pinecones, twigs, flowers and shells.

How often should we do a seasonal craft?

Once a week is a good rhythm for most families, on the same afternoon. In the few weeks before a festival you might do a little more, such as making lanterns across several afternoons before Martinmas.

Waldorf Seasonal Crafts Through the Year, by Season and Festival

Waldorf seasonal crafts follow two things: what's happening outside your door, and the next festival on the calendar. In autumn your child makes leaf pictures, felted pumpkins and a lantern for Martinmas. In winter it's Advent yarn stars, window stars and beeswax candles. Spring brings dyed eggs and flower crowns, and summer brings a midsummer wreath and paper suncatchers. Keep the materials simple, and put what your child makes on the nature table.

Why Waldorf crafts follow the seasons

Picture a basket of fallen leaves on the kitchen table in October, a pot of glue and a sheet of paper. Your child sorts the red ones from the yellow, then turns them into a dragon with leaf scales. A week later the picture goes up beside the nature table, and in November a paper lantern takes its place.

That's the idea behind seasonal crafts. Your child makes things from what the season hands them, and each craft points toward the next festival. The craft is a way of noticing the year with their hands.

Marije Rowling's Making the Children's Year (Hawthorn Press) is a book of crafts built this way, in print for about thirty years. It draws on Steiner Waldorf education and runs through the year with projects like tissue paper lanterns, flower crowns, lavender bags and corn wreaths. A book like this on the shelf makes it easy to pick one project a week.

Our festival guides have a page for each festival, and each page has its own crafts, story and songs. The crafts below point you to them.

Autumn crafts

Harvest festival (late September)

Go for a walk and fill a basket with fallen leaves. At home, lay a leaf under thin paper and rub over it with the side of a block crayon until the veins show through. Or felt a little wool pumpkin: roll a ball of orange wool in warm soapy water until it firms up, then add a green stem. Our guide to wet felting with children walks through the rolling step by step. The Harvest festival page has more.

Michaelmas (29 September)

Michaelmas is the festival of courage, with St Michael and the dragon at its heart. Glue pressed leaves onto paper as a dragon's scales, with long thin leaves for the tail. Or paint an autumn tree wet-on-wet, with yellow for the whole page and red for the trunk and leaves. The Michaelmas page also has a dragon bread to bake together.

Martinmas (11 November)

This is the lantern festival. Families walk at dusk with a lantern each and sing. A clean glass jar covered in torn tissue paper and glue makes a lantern that even a 3-year-old can help with. The tearing is the child's job. Older children can fold a paper lantern. The adult does the candle. The Martinmas page has both lanterns and the songs.

Winter crafts

Advent (the four weeks before Christmas)

Advent is quiet and candlelit, so its crafts are small and slow. Cross two sticks and wind colored yarn round them, over and under, into a God's eye star. Felt a few acorns, or make a nativity figure from wool. The Advent spiral page has these crafts week by week.

Paper window stars suit this season too. Folded from translucent kite paper and stuck to the glass, they glow when the low winter sun comes through. Our separate guide to Waldorf window stars has the folds.

Beeswax through the cold months

Winter is a good time for beeswax modeling. Your child warms a small piece in their hands until it softens, then shapes a sheep for the nativity or a small bird for the nature table.

Candlemas (2 February)

Candlemas is the festival of the returning light, and its craft is candles. Rolling a candle from a sheet of beeswax needs no heat at all, so a young child can make one alone. Dipping candles means melted wax, so the adult stays at the pot. W Curriculum lists a long run of Candlemas candle crafts, from walnut-shell boats to candle dipping. A Brigid's cross woven from rushes or paper strips belongs here too. See the Candlemas page.

Spring crafts

Easter

Dye eggs with onion skins for a warm red-brown, or draw patterns on card eggs with a white beeswax crayon and wash over them with watery paint so the lines show through. Plant a tray of grass seed a week or two before, so it's green by Easter morning. The Easter page has the moss garden too.

May Day (1 May)

Bend a long, supple willow stick into a ring, weave the end round it, and tuck in flowers and leaves for a crown. Felt a few flowers from colored wool for the nature table. The May Day page has the ribbon pole and the May bread.

Spring is also a good time to start finger knitting. A long finger-knitted chain can tie the flowers onto a crown.

Summer crafts

St John's (24 June)

St John's is the midsummer festival of fire and light. Make a wreath of summer flowers and herbs on a willow ring, or a small bundle of garden herbs tied with string. Cut sun shapes from colored paper, layer them, and stick them to a sunny window as suncatchers. The St John's page has the full day.

Long summer days

Susquehanna Waldorf School suggests nature crowns and flower wands, bubble wands bent from wire, wet-on-wet painting and finger knitting for younger children in summer. For grades 3 and up, it lists woodworking projects like spoons and birdhouses, weaving and embroidery, and dried herb sachets. Our article on woodworking with children covers the first carving projects.

If you live in the southern hemisphere

In Australia and New Zealand the seasons run the other way. Your Martinmas lanterns may come out in the dark of June, and your harvest crafts around March. Follow the season outside your window, not a book written for Europe. Most of our festival guides have notes for the southern hemisphere.

A year of crafts, month by month

For the northern hemisphere. Pick one each month and add more if your child wants them.

Month	Festival or season	One craft to try
September	Harvest, Michaelmas	Leaf dragon collage
October	Autumn	Felted wool pumpkins
November	Martinmas	Tissue paper jar lantern
December	Advent	God's eye yarn star
January	Three Kings, winter	Paper window stars
February	Candlemas	Rolled beeswax candles
March	Early spring	Pot of seeds or Easter grass
April	Easter	Onion-skin dyed eggs
May	May Day	Willow flower crown
June	St John's	Paper suncatchers
July	Summer	Finger-knitted chain
August	Late summer	Pressed flower card

Crafts for toddlers and younger children

For children under 4, choose crafts where the hands do the work and nothing has to come out right. Tearing tissue paper, sorting leaves, rolling wet wool and pressing a flower all work well. Young children often want to join in with whatever you're making. Bright Water Waldorf School describes its kindergarten teachers doing real work with their hands and the children joining in without being asked. So make your lantern at the table and let your child help with the part they can manage.

Materials to keep on hand

A small basket covers most of the year:

wool roving in a few colors
sheets of colored beeswax
tissue paper or kite paper
watercolor paper, paints and a wide brush (see wet-on-wet watercolor)
beeswax block and stick crayons
a glue stick, string and a good pair of scissors
whatever you bring home from a walk

Our supplies list has the rest.

Where the crafts go

Put finished crafts on the nature table, which changes with the season too. The leaf dragon comes down when the lantern goes up. When a craft is ready to leave, your child can give it to a grandparent or take it to a school fair. If you want to see a festival in company, the Waldorf school fairs and festivals page lists open school events in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

A month to try

Week 1: take a walk and bring home a basket of whatever's out there.
Week 2: make one craft from what you found.
Week 3: start the craft for the next festival.
Week 4: put everything on the nature table and let your child arrange it.