Beginning of autumn - best time for collecting natural wonders for children's creativity. Often at the beginning of the school year, kindergarten teachers or elementary school teachers ask to bring natural material for natural history classes or labor lessons. However, interesting leaves, seeds and branches cannot be found near the house; you need to go to a park or forest to get them. Such a walk with your child can be turned not only into a useful activity, but also into a real holiday.

Why is it so important to collect natural materials?

Only in the park or on the edge of the forest can you find many twigs, beautiful leaves, driftwood, flowers, cones and various seeds. This means that it is best to collect natural materials during a small forest trip. There are many benefits to collecting natural material and then working with it.

• The child learns to see the features of leaves and branches, and by feeling and manipulating, he learns how different the texture can be. Some leaves are smooth to the touch, while others are rough. Some seeds are very tiny, while others, like chestnuts, are large.
• Only in practical activities does it become clear to the child how durable this or that natural material is. It always happens that part collected leaves or you have to throw out the snags at home - not everything can be delivered safe and sound. And it would be a big mistake to scold a child for a broken branch or flower. Understanding the world is not complete without this.
• Walking through the forest and looking for interesting leaves and snags is a pleasant and exciting activity for both you and your baby. Don't we often deprive ourselves of pleasant things lately? While walking with your baby, don't forget to stop, look around and observe the seasonal changes in nature. Talk to him about autumn colors. Listen to the leaves rustling under your feet and smell their spicy scent. Together, find dried grass that has already “gone to sleep” for the winter. The autumn forest is special. You can barely hear birds in it and you can’t see insects at all.
• To find truly unusual seeds, leaves and branches, you often need to go further, examining not only the nearest edge of the forest, but also more distant corners of the forest. The health benefits of walking can hardly be overestimated. Our children, immersed in gadgets, are hypodynamic, and so are we. Therefore, while it’s warm, it’s worth tearing your child away from his favorite tablet or computer and going into the forest.
• We collect natural materials so that children at home, in kindergarten or school have the opportunity to engage in creativity. But we must not forget that any creative process begins in the forest. Ideas on how to use this or that twig or pine cone are born almost immediately, during a walk in the forest. How can you expect an interesting craft from a child if he has not “thought it out” in advance?

Together, not instead

The most common mistake, which is allowed by parents - collecting natural material without the participation of children. How does it usually happen? The teacher or teacher at school said to bring natural materials next week, and the responsible mother after work runs into the nearest park or square and collects the first thing that comes to hand. We'll figure it out at home!

Let's be honest, we often try to live “in place of” our children and make decisions without taking into account their opinions. And then we are surprised at the response of indifference and displeasure. But this is simply a mirror of our relationship.

Those leaves and flowers that will be used for applications can be dried under a press. Before drying, large petioles are removed from the leaves. The laid out plants are laid out in 3-4 layers with newspapers, and a heavy load is placed on top. Newspapers are changed daily. And after 5 days the drying will be completed. More quick way– ironing through sheets of paper. But it is not always possible to preserve the original color.

Another interesting, but longer method of drying leaves and flowers is in clean sand or semolina. The plants are carefully laid out in a box and carefully covered with sand or cereal. Then close the lid so that the bulk material does not get wet, and leave the box at room temperature for 2-3 weeks.

Twigs, roses and dried flowers are usually tied into bunches and hung to dry. Chestnuts, acorns, hazelnuts and other seeds, as well as fruits, you must remember to place them in an open, ventilated place. Collected in autumn time, they are quite moist and in a closed box, and even more so plastic bag, will become moldy and simply rot.

How to use

Most often, parents store dried natural materials “away” from the child. How much work was invested - to find, bring, dry! What if it breaks or ruins it?

However, in order to awaken creativity and the desire to experiment, you need to create an environment where creativity and experimentation are possible! Natural material, at least less brittle, must be stored in a place accessible to the child. So that he can, when he wants, open the box and try to do something on his own.

What is the role of parents? She is, perhaps, twofold.

Firstly, it is important to show how to manipulate the found forest wonders, that is, parents should teach how to bend, cut off unnecessary things, peel the bark... It is worth showing the child that flat leaves can be glued to colored paper. Snags - tie with thread or soft wire. Acorns - connect to each other using plasticine or a piece of a match. Creating crafts for children, in addition to developing imagination, - a great opportunity learn to use glue, scissors and other tools. In addition, this is a sure way to develop fine motor skills of the hand, and therefore speech.

Nature- an inexhaustible source of creativity and inspiration. From time immemorial, people have drawn themes for works of art from it. For the people, their environment was not something frozen, motionless. Fields and trees, sun and clouds, grass and mountains were spiritualized images in fairy tales, epics, proverbs and sayings. In wildflowers, people saw the charm of youth, birds were a symbol of freedom and independence, the wind was the personification of strength and power, the Dnieper-Slavutich - wisdom and greatness, the people affectionately call the great Russian river Volga mother. Love for nature comes with a mother's lullaby and a grandmother's leisurely, educational tale.

Nature teaches, educates. Remember “Three hundred pages of the “Book of Nature” by V. A. Sukhomlinsky, his famous “school under the blue sky”. Man is the master of his land, a master, not a waster. A caring attitude towards nature must be cultivated from childhood, just like respect for elders, culture of behavior in society.

For a long time folk craftsmen used natural materials to make various crafts, many of which outgrew their narrow utilitarian purpose and turned into genuine works of art. Fedoskino and Palekh boxes have gained worldwide fame, Dymkovo and Filimonov clay toys are widely known, and the famous matryoshka doll is very popular in our country and abroad.

All natural materials can be divided into two large groups: plant and mineral. Plants include leaves of trees and shrubs, bark, flowers, straws, cones, acorns, chestnuts, etc., minerals include sand, shells, pebbles, etc. The list of one and the other group is quite extensive, therefore, based on local conditions, you can always find material for any homemade product.

When collecting natural material It is difficult to predict what exactly will go into making a particular craft, since creating toys is a creative process. A toy is sometimes born impromptu, so much more material is collected than is required for one or two classes. Must be at hand big choice everything you need.

Storage of natural material presents no difficulty. The technology for preparing some of them will be discussed in the relevant sections. It is not recommended to store natural material in bulk. It must be sorted by type and stored either in folders or boxes. This makes it easier to find during work and contributes to better safety.

D for working with natural materials use various tools. Thin branches are cut with a small penknife. For sawing, a fine-toothed file or sometimes a jigsaw is used. The work requires a hammer, pliers, an awl, a small drill or a brace with a set of small-diameter drills. Small parts made of natural material is difficult to handle in your hands, so to secure them, use a small vise or hold the parts with tweezers.

Process natural materials necessary on a special table. If there is no such table, you can use an ordinary board for work, on which a board with a wedge-shaped cut is nailed to hold the parts. This device is used when planing wood on a carpentry bench.

As a child, I passionately dreamed of making with my own hands those amazing things that are shown in tutorials on various hobbies. But my motor skills were not at the required level. My parents didn’t want to bother with collecting materials, and my dreams began to come true only after I gave birth to my own daughter. Having an apartment, a child and maximalism at my disposal, I soon received a dream: my entire apartment was littered with dry, crumbling or, conversely, slowly rotting natural materials. My daughter and I enthusiastically carried these materials on every walk. As a result, we only got fir cones, which are hard to spoil, and a couple of maple leaves. Since that autumn, I began to prepare materials for crafts using my own method.

The first thing you need for good preparation is a good plan:

• what will you collect,
• what will you make of this?
• how much space in the house are you willing to devote to drying materials,
• where will you store them later.

The amount of materials depends on two factors: your interest in making crafts and the interest of the teacher (or teacher in kindergarten). The interests of the child can be completely neglected - he uses everything that is in the house. The question is whether you can remove it all later. So, the calculations are quite simple: your ideal idea of ​​how many crafts you will make, minus 50% of that, plus the cost of preparing decorations for the New Year.

On average, for a mother who is not a fan, 20-30 maple leaves, 10 flowers, a bag of fir cones, half a bag of pine cones are enough.

A matchbox of various seeds: snub noses, seeds of marigold flowers, and so on - whatever you personally like. Stones and sand can also be useful (especially when building cities). Three large stones are enough (a large one is the size of an adult palm), medium-sized stones - according to the number of family members who should be gifted (they are convenient for making gifts for the New Year), small stones - 10-15 pieces, very small ones stones - according to needs (some people don’t need it, but others take it into their heads to pave two meters). Also collect branches based on your needs and desires.

How to collect natural materials

It is best to collect natural materials during the day in sunny weather. Or at least not in the rain. Firstly, you will clearly see what you are taking, and secondly, you will have less to dry. You collect chestnuts, acorns and maple leaves, of course, in season. The same applies to branches - they should be without leaves. Branches can be taken in the forest, spruce, pine and any deciduous, covered with lichens, or already in a park square, but when the trees shed their leaves.

When going out to work, have your own container for each individual material. This will make it easier to disassemble the houses, and you will see how much you have collected. Stones, cones, branches can be collected in a regular plastic bag (or rag bag), boxes are needed for flowers and seeds.

For large flowers - a children's shoe box, for small ones - matchboxes. Do not take a lot at once - it is better to divide the collection of natural materials into several stages. It’s like with mushrooms - your eyes are envious, and you can’t sleep at night, sorting and cleaning them.

photo Mirina

How to dry collected materials

So, the harvested “harvest” must be dried so that it retains its properties and beauty. The branches are dried on the windowsill, on newspapers in several layers. All sorts of spider bugs will crawl out of branches, especially those covered with lichen, so be prepared for this. They will also crawl out of cones that are dried in the same way - on newspapers. Pine cones take much longer to dry than spruce cones and will open up when dried. The seeds of both spruce and pine cones are quite volatile, so if you have some kind of large box (for example, from boots with high tops), it is better to cover its bottom with newspapers and dry the branches-cones in it. Flowers and herbs are dried in a very special way - depending on the bud and its height, they are dried either upside down, hanging as in Baba Yaga's hut, or in semolina. In order to dry a voluminous flower, you need to take a cup, pour about two fingers of semolina onto its bottom, carefully lower the flower with the bud down and slowly and carefully continue to sprinkle with semolina on all sides. It is advisable to dry in a warm place. “Herbarium specimens”, which will then be used for postcards, are dried between newspapers under weight, changing newspapers every day. Please note that flowers and herbs should not be ironed! This is the prerogative of leaves, and not all of them. The leaves dry well between the pages of books. Stones and sand are thoroughly washed, dried and put into a box. Apple seeds and other “homemade” natural materials are collected during the cooking process and dried in matchboxes.

In order to correctly use various natural materials, you need to know their properties and characteristics during processing and behavior in the finished product. It may turn out that a natural material with an interesting shape is difficult to process: it is either very hard or crumbles and breaks. But it happens, on the contrary, that a beautiful and pliable material after some time becomes deformed or changes its color, and the craft becomes unusable. In order not to be upset later, you should know how using glue, varnish or dyes you can improve or even change the properties of many natural materials.

In various crafts, the same natural material can act as the main or auxiliary material.
Individual parts: arms, legs, beards of men, shoes, beaks of birds, sea waves are made from so-called auxiliary materials. For example, legs, arms, noses are made from sticks and twigs, beards are made from moss and lichen, shoes are made from halves of acorns or pine nuts, seeds or logs, waves are made from birch bark (Fig. 13), hats are made from green shells hazelnuts(Fig. 6), and the bird heads are made from beans (Fig. 14).

With each new craft made comes experience, thanks to which you yourself will find options for making certain parts. By choosing different natural materials, you will see how different the results are and how interesting it is to combine different materials.

BRANCHES OF TREES AND SHRUBS.

To make arms and legs for figures of men and paws of animals, branches of lilac, dogwood and other species of trees and shrubs, whose young shoots are shaped like slingshots, are perfect (Fig. 7). And the branches of willow and redwood make excellent bird legs, since their bark is red.

It is advisable to select the knots from which the human limbs will be made so that the slingshots have thickenings similar to joints. When making legs, the bark is partially removed from the knots. If you leave a little bark at the bottom of the “leg” knot, you will get a “sock”, and if at the top, then you will get panties. At the same time, the branches act as connecting elements, pins, with the help of which the individual parts of the craft are connected to each other. But some tree species have too soft wood, which, when dried, becomes brittle and brittle. Therefore in the forests middle zone and northern regions of Russia, we recommend collecting branches of spruce, lilac and birch, and in the south also branches of hornbeam and dogwood, since it is on them that it is easy to pick up the necessary knots. Don’t break off living branches, look and in any forest you will find a tree with dry branches! But be careful, do not take dry, brittle branches.

The thickness of the knots is selected in accordance with the size of the figurine. If the sticks have an additional function - connecting parts, then they need to be neither too thick (it will be difficult to insert) nor too thin (they may break, unable to withstand the weight of the figure).

To make shoes, small logs are sawn off from thick branches. Then they split them in half (Fig. 8 a) and holes are drilled in each half, into which sticks are then inserted (Fig. 8 b). The bark is left only if the little man needs to be “put on bast shoes.” To do this, the bark on the logs is cut into “cells” and the tip of a knife is carefully removed from some of the cells in a checkerboard pattern. It turns out very similar to ancient Russian shoes - bast shoes.

From thick and thin sticks you can make RAFT WITH SAIL from a maple leaf or a piece of birch bark (Fig. 9). Branches of aspen, willow or bird cherry are best suited for this.

First, prepare three “logs” of the same length with pointed ends (part 1). Drill two holes in each. Then take two thin sticks (part 2), make three through holes and six short pegs (part 3) in them.
Cut a steering wheel from a twig with a knot (part 4). And from a long thin branch, splitting it in the middle by two-thirds of the length, make a mast (part 5). Having prepared all the parts, assemble them as shown in Figure 9, after inserting a maple leaf or a rectangular piece of thin birch bark into the mast slot. After assembling the raft, make a hole in the middle log and insert it into the mast.

PLANT ROOTS.

Roots come in a variety of shapes, so they can be used in various crafts and compositions. But mainly they serve to imitate trees in small compositions. The dried roots of small Christmas trees are best suited for this. The roots of gooseberries and currants are also suitable for crafts. The roots of these shrubs lend themselves well to processing: they are easy to cut, drill, and glue well. In some products they act as the main material. For example, from large root you can make something extraordinary floor vase.

PLANT BULBS.

This is a perishable material. But the bulbs are quite suitable for crafts that do not require long-term storage, such as toys for the Christmas tree. You can also make original and funny toys and figures from them. Their main advantage is ease of manufacture and availability of the material at any time of the year (Fig. 10).

The bulbs are easily cut with a knife and pierced with an awl. The shape of the bulbs allows you to create crafts instantly, without finishing almost anything. For example, Figure 10a shows the head CHIPPOLINO. All you have to do is attach the eyes, nose and mouth to the onion - and the head is ready! Heads are made in the same way OLD MAN And MATRYOSHKA(Fig. 10 6, c). If you pass a thick thread with a loop at one end through the entire onion and tie a knot at the bottom of the onion, then the figurine can be hung on christmas tree.

TREE BARK.

Any bark is suitable for crafts. It all depends on the specific composition and imagination of the author. The most valuable are pine, oak, linden and birch bark.

Thick birch (or pine) bark is suitable for making any stand. It is also used to create individual parts (Fig. 11), cut out boats, rocks, and various figures. For example, try doing BOAT(Fig. 12). From a piece of pine bark, cut out the body of the boat (part 1) and the steering wheel (part 2). Make sails from two pieces of birch bark (parts 3 and 4), and from a planed stick - a mast (part 5). Assemble the boat as shown in Figure 12.

Birch bark makes good sea waves (Fig. 13), kerchiefs, hats, handbags, buckets, and bird legs (geese, ducks, herons).

The bark retains its softness, plasticity, color for a long time, and is easy to process. But when preparing bark for crafts, you should keep in mind that, for example, pine bark, when dried, separates into separate plates. Therefore, in order for it to better preserve its properties, it must be glued and varnished.

SEEDS-IMPLEMENTS.

On maple, hornbeam, ash and linden trees, winged seeds ripen in the fall - a natural material necessary for crafts (Fig. 15). Winged seeds are harvested when they are ripe, but still have greenish color and fastened in pairs. If they are collected during this period, they remain in “working” condition for a long time.

Winged seeds should be stored in cardboard box, separately from other raw materials, and make sure that they do not dry out or crack.

The ears of animals (hares, squirrels), the heads and tail feathers of birds (Fig. 17), various clothes [skirts (Fig. 16), dresses] for little men and much more are made from winged seeds.

THISTLE AND BURDRY FLOWERS

An unusually expressive and interesting natural material for crafts (Fig. 18 a). From them you can make the heads of little men (Fig. 18 6), the faces of hares, cats, dogs and other animals. Collecting thistle and burdock inflorescences is quite difficult because of the thin sharp needles covering both the inflorescence itself and the stem and leaves. Having collected thistle inflorescences, they must be treated at home with liquid carpenter's glue, otherwise, when drying, they will open up and scatter into a thousand fluffs.

Be careful when working with burdock inflorescences. Numerous small hooks on burdock scales cling tightly to clothing and to each other.

MOSS, MOSS, LICHEN

Moss mosses are often found in damp moss forests. Moss moss is an interesting and often used ornamental natural material. It makes good additional elements, for example, deer antlers (Fig. 19 a) or a girl’s pigtails (Fig. 19 b).

Moss and lichens grow in coniferous and mixed forests. Lichens often cover trees, hanging from branches or twining around the trunk. This is a wonderful natural material for making beards and mustaches of little men, creating compositions of a fabulous dense forest.

Harvested mosses, mosses and lichens, before being used in crafts, must be dried well in a suspended state or in a herbarium folder.

How to do this correctly is described in the article “The Second Life of Plants.”

FRUITS OF WATER LILY.

In place of faded beautiful white and yellow water lilies, which are often found in quiet river backwaters of rivers and lakes, fruits of original shape are set (Fig. 20 a). These fruits are very fleshy and are suitable for crafts only when well dried. As they dry, they wrinkle somewhat, but this gives them an even more interesting shape.
Such fruits make wonderful pig stigmas (Fig. 20 b).

ALDER CONES.

At the end of summer, clusters of fruits form on the alder - cones, whose shape resembles unripe raspberries. If these cones are collected at the end of July and treated with glue, you will get an excellent natural ornamental material, from which you can then make human fists, animal paws and bird heads.

This is a universal natural ornamental material, from which various and beautiful products and toys have long been made in Rus'. For the crafts presented on this site, you will need rye, oat and wheat straw as an additional auxiliary material. Straw can be easily processed: smoothed, cut and painted.

To create crafts, you will need straw, both round and flattened, carefully smoothed. For those who are unfamiliar with straw processing, let us give some useful tips.

For work, you need to choose fresh, even straw that is not crushed, rotten or moldy. It is collected by hand. The straw stems are cleared of leaves and the roots are trimmed with scissors. For storage, straw stems should be cut into pieces (by nodes) and carefully placed in a box.

Flat straws are made from round and even stems. They are placed in boiling water, the container is covered with a lid and left to steam for several hours. Having taken it out of the water after steaming, the straw is cut lengthwise with small scissors or a sharp knife (Fig. 21 a, b). Then the cut straw is smoothed on both sides with a hot iron (Fig. 21 c). If you iron for a long time, you can change the color of the straw from golden to dark brown.

Straw can be dyed in another way - simply by boiling it in a solution of aniline dye. The color saturation depends on the duration of boiling. In this case, you can get any color you choose.

Natural materials in technology lessons

Nature is an inexhaustible source of creativity and inspiration. From time immemorial, people have drawn themes for works of art from it.

You can select Several factors for the beneficial effects of working with natural materials:

development of sensorimotor. Coherence in the work of eyes and hands develops, coordination of actions improves. In the process of making crafts, a system of special skills and abilities is gradually formed;

mental development of the child. Tracing the path to making crafts from natural materials, you can see that first children examine the sample, analyze its structure, and then the child makes a craft according to his own design;

development of attention. The stability of attention increases, voluntary attention is formed;

Children's curiosity is satisfied. In this type of activity there is always novelty, creative search, and the opportunity to achieve more perfect results;

development of the child’s personality, education of his character. Making a toy is not so easy: its production requires certain willful efforts. When a child encounters difficulties, he should try to cope with them on his own.

Applique work on crafts made from natural plant material requires precise actions from the child, and if at first it happens that especially great perseverance is required during production, then with the advent of certain skills, finger flexibility, grasping skills, and movements develop. fine motor skills, fantasy. Coherence in the work of vision and hand actions appears, coordination of movements, flexibility and accuracy in performing the necessary actions are improved.

All natural materials can be divided into two large groups: plant and mineral. Plant materials include leaves of trees and shrubs, bark, flowers, straws, cones, acorns, chestnuts, etc. Mineral - sand, shells, pebbles, etc.

Plant natural materialsare used for making flat, convex and three-dimensional compositions in labor lessons in all grades. Even in kindergarten, preschoolers make applications from leaves and seeds, three-dimensional compositions from various fruits and their parts, twigs. In the third and fourth grades of school, children can already include petals, flowers and inflorescences in floral applications. Particularly original works are made from cereal straw.

Natural materials not only need to be collected, they need to be properly processed, stored and systematically replenished.

Leaves,collected by children during an excursion lesson, in the classroom they are sorted by tree species and sizes, if necessary, wiped with a dry cloth and placed under a press for drying in special corrugated cardboard folders, interspersed with pieces of newspaper. Newspapers are changed every two to three days until the leaves are completely dry.Small flowers, inflorescences and petalsCut flowers are traditionally dried in books, which provide strong compression to thin surfaces and dry them quickly. For ease of use during lessons, prepared materials are stored in folding paper boxes.SeedsApple trees, pears, watermelon, melons, etc. are thoroughly washed at home from juice, dried on paper or a towel and then stored in the classroom in glass containers with a lid.

Let us make a reservation once again: seeds grown specifically for food and sold in the form of cereals (rice, buckwheat, millet, peas, etc.) can be used exclusively in fragments and very rarely (the eyes of a voluminous toy made of chestnuts or cones).Tree fruits(acorns, chestnuts, nuts, cones) are collected and dusted. Then they are dried and stored strictly according to grade in marked cardboard boxes. The prickly peel is removed from the chestnuts, dried, and stored separately from the fruit. The chestnut fruit itself (walnut) should be used in the same year, since it will inevitably shrink from drying out (which will not prevent its inclusion in a magnificent composition) and drilling holes in it for mounting with other parts will be much more difficult than in a fresh one. Nuts (walnuts, hazel, pistachios) are rarely used whole. As a rule, only their shells are useful for our compositions. It is collected throughout the year. Store in glass containers with a lid.

Cones (spruce, pine, alder and other tree species) are collected from the ground in the fall, dusted and dried. It should be remembered that when drying out, fresh buds change appearance- they open up. And they need to be stored in a dry place, away from water, otherwise they will become moldy. If you need a closed pine cone to implement your plan in the middle of winter, you will have to soak it in a glass container for several days. As soon as it is closed, it is taken out, wiped, dried a little and the shape is preserved. To do this, the cone is dipped in wood glue and dried. If a fresh cone (closed) needs to be opened quickly, force drying is used. The cone is placed on hot battery for a day or two and observe the change in shape. It's even easier to open the cone by drying it in the oven at home (children should do this under parental supervision).

To work in a mug, you may need cones of a curved shape. In this case, the fresh cone is boiled until the core becomes soft. Having taken it out of boiling water, it is cooled, bent with your hands in the desired direction and “bandaged”, fixing the shape. In this form, the workpiece dries completely. Then the bandage is removed and the workpiece is preserved in wood glue.Bark,As a rule, it serves as a base (main) part on which a volumetric composition is assembled. Bark fragments are collected from stumps or tree trunks when they are spring pruning. Of particular value is the layered bark of birch, birch bark. It is steamed in boiling water, separated, then dried under pressure. As a rule, birch bark is used in circle work.Thin branchespicked up from the ground, dedusted, stored in cardboard boxes.Cereal strawcleared of leaves, cut out nodes. The resulting internode tubes are boiled at home for 20 minutes to disinfect, removed from boiling water and cooled on a towel. Some of the long tubes are split with a knife along the fibers and smoothed with a hot iron over a glossy surface, turning them into a ribbon. The remaining tubes are thoroughly dried to prevent rotting, then stored in cardboard boxes, divided by shade.The straw can be colored if necessary (although it already has a rich palette). Boiling in a soda solution with the addition of onion skins enhances yellow straws, with alder cones or oak bark- gives her Brown color. If we want to get unusual bright colors(red, purple, green, etc.), the straw must first be bleached with ordinary household bleaches for cotton fabrics. Then it is thoroughly rinsed and immersed in a solution of aniline fabric dyes. Having received desired color, the straw is removed from the solution, rinsed again in running water and dried.modeling fine arts sculptures

Properties of natural plant materials prepared for use. What do you need to know to make durable compositions?

When dried under pressure, leaves and flowers slightly change color, fix their shape, and lose elasticity. They become hard and brittle. These properties dictate technological methods for working with them. When assembling applications from leaves and flowers, PVA glue is used, which is applied pointwise.

Frommineral natural materialsPebbles, shells, eggshells and feathers are available for work.

Smallpebbles and shells,usually ready to eat. They are thoroughly washed, dried and stored in small portions in cardboard boxes, sorted by size.Kissing the eggshellThey cook at home, under the guidance of their parents, but during the lessons students carefully analyze the techniques of working from the textbook. In the beginning the whole a raw egg needs to be washed under running water cold water, wipe, carefully sew the puncture shell from the poles and blow the contents into the cup. Then, closing one of the holes with your finger, pour a little water into the shell through the other, shake several times and blow the remaining water into the sink. Whole shells (three per student) are stored in a cardboard box in the classroom and used as semi-finished toys throughout the year. Shell fragments are stored separately; they will be needed for mosaic applications on clay flower pots.Bird feathersused as finishing products with great care. As a rule, these are two or three feathers “taken” from a pillow, or a bright feather dropped by a domestic parrot to decorate an Indian’s hairstyle.

All products made from the above materials can be divided into flat, convex and volumetric.

TOflat products,collected using GTVA glue include applications made from herbarium-dried leaves, flowers and inflorescences, and petals. Tubular and flattened straw and seeds are also used. Leaves, flowers and inflorescences are fixed to the background part by drip gluing. The straws and seeds are glued to the entire surface.

The technology for making appliqué from natural materials by junior schoolchildren involves the following stages of work:

– preparation of material, its selection;

– choosing a pattern for the applique;

– material position, sketch creation;

– selection of equipment, tools, auxiliary materials;

– techniques for performing crafts in various ways.

ForconvexAppliqués use dried flat straw pieces on tracing paper. They are folded in the same way as any paper parts. However, it should be remembered that the direction of bending must exactly coincide with the direction of the fibers of the straw. Then the part will bend easily. If the direction is transverse, the strips of the straw will peel off from the tracing paper. Glue the curved straw fragments to the background part, just like the paper ones, at one point.

In the first grade, students use plasticine molding to connect three-dimensional parts; in the second grade, the parts are glued together with PVA glue (in some cases, preliminary cleaning of the joints with sandpaper or a file is required); in the third and fourth grades, they are joined using pins.

In addition to plant-based natural materials, some mineral materials of animal origin are used in primary classes. These are shells and eggshells. Such materials can be combined in products with natural plant, paper and polymer materials, with semi-finished products.

A separate group among products made from plant natural materials is formed byChristmas tree pendants made from flattened straw. Since straw has a natural shine and a very elegant color, it can be flattened with an iron, cutting off the ends, aligning the length of the blanks and knitting according to the pattern to make, for example, an eight-pointed Christmas star. The pendant will be especially elegant if its rays are intertwined with Christmas tree rain.

More complex compositions are obtained from entire straw tubes, which are strung on a Christmas tree rain, resulting in end-to-end volumetric pendants.