Beautiful and easy homemade garden ornaments for kids to make. Here are over 10 terrific decorations for the backyard, porch or patio, that kids to make as gifts for parents, grandparents, teachers or neighbours!
Now that spring has and you’re getting your backyard and garden ready for summer, it’s a great time to make some garden crafts with your kids.
We’ve made some gorgeous homemade ornaments for the garden in the past few years. They’re all hanging ornaments that can be displayed in the garden, in a tree in your yard, or to add a bit of colour and charm to a patio, deck or porch.
Most of these crafts were made by the kids to give to their parents for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, but we’ve also hung several in the outdoor play space in our back yard here by the sandbox and playhouse.
That’s the nice thing about these ornaments; you can give them as gifts, or use them at home to add a bit of whimsy indoors or outdoors.
Bonus: These simple garden crafts were all made using common items we had around the house.
Don’t you just love a good recycled craft project?
Click the links below each photo for the full instructions for each craft.
10+ Homemade Garden Ornaments for Kids to Make:
These gorgeousFlower Drop Ornamentsare super-easy for any age to make, but they’re particularly great for toddlers because they’re so easy!
These ornaments allow children to strengthen their fine-motor skills, and boy-oh-boy, they look SO beautiful. The hooligans made them for Mother’s Day, and I also hung 5 of them from a rafter on my own deck last summer.
These mason jar lanterns are really easy to make and look lovely lighting up a patio on a summer evening. All you need is a jar, white glue and food colouring to make them!
Turn a bunch of old, scratched CDs and DVDs into garden art! Our CD Wind Spinners look great hanging from a tree branch in the yard, and you should see the way they spin in the wind!
Here’s another terrific craft to make with old CDs. This Painted CD Garden Mobile is a great group project for kids to make in art class or at craft camp. The kids can all work on their own individual CDs, and you can string them together to make this collaborative piece of art to hang in your outdoor play space!
This Bead and Bauble Sun Catcher makes a lovely gift, and it was really easy to make. This is another great fine-motor craft for little hands.
We hung our sun catcher in the kitchen window all winter, and the hooligans loved how the prism scattered light all over the kitchen walls on sunny days.
OurRainbow Wind Chimescontinue to be one of my favourite homemade outdoor ornaments ever.We made them out of a bunch of sticks we’d collected on a walk one day.
The project itself was a lot of fun, and these colourful chimes have been hanging from a tree branch beside our play house for years. They add such a nice splash of colour to that corner of the yard, and the kids love to knock them together to hear the woody sound they make.
Summer Stars TwigOrnament Here’s another gorgeous garden craft you can make after going on a stick hunt with your kids. These twig stars are so simple to make, and again, great for really young children as there’s no rhyme or reason to how you decorate them.
Once again, fine-motor skills are challenged with this craft, and the results are just so beautiful. You can hang this twig ornament from a tree brancha corner of your porch, the door of a shed… this one works just about anywhere.
Here’s a great homemade ornament for your kids to make and hang in their outdoor play space.
For years, our recycled plastic bottle wind chime hung in a tree near our play house, but recently, I actually attached it to the playhouse so we could enjoy it a bit better. It still looks as bright and colourful as it did the day we made it!
OurPringles Can Wind Sockwas fun and easy to make, and the ribbons look wonderful fluttering in the wind.
This is another project that can brighten up a little spot in your child’s outdoor play area. It’s so nice when they can decorate their space with crafts they’ve made themselves.
Next up, we have a couple of patriotic garden crafts. You can make these Patriotic Wind Twirlers for Canada Day or for the 4th of July. Actually, you could make them for any patriotic holiday as long as you paint them in your country’s colours.
You can hang these ornaments all in a row to form a twirling banner on your front porch!
This 4th of July hanging ornament was inspired by the Summer Stars above.
We skipped the raffia, and instead, we painted our stars red, white and blue to hang on the porch or the front door for Independence Day.
Our water bottle wind spirals took the internet by storm when we shared them last year. I think it’s because they’re so easy, but they look SO fantastic!
Honestly, crafting with kids doesn’t get much simpler than this. You should see the way this ornament bounces and dances in the wind!
And lastly, our water bottle whirligig. These are super-springy so they really bounce when the wind blows them, or when the kids give them a little tug.
This homemade garden ornament is pretty enough to hang on the deck or patio, but quite fun, so the kids might want it for their own space in the back yard.
More Backyard Ornaments for Kids to Make:
32 homemade bird feeders
8 homemade wind chimes for kids
Seashell windchime craft – Red Ted Art
and you’ll also love these 26 garden projects by Crafts by Amanda!
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Jackie Currie
Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
