Aimee Olivo has fond memories of walking along the beach with her children in Surf City, North Carolina, gathering seashells and other objects that washed ashore.
After collecting their treasures, the family returned to their spot in the sand and began turning the ordinary outdoor items into artwork.
The on-the-move activity creates nature mandalas, a sustainable artform that encourages families to get outside, pick up natural materials that catch their eye and temporarily arrange them in unique patterns on the ground.
“It’s a way to talk to kids about [the fact that] their art doesn’t have to be forever,” says Olivo, a mother of teenagers and executive director of Art Works Now, a women-led nonprofit arts organization in Hyattsville, Maryland. “It can be something they really enjoy making while they’re doing it, and then it can also go away.”
Nature mandalas have become a beloved project for all ages at Art Works Now. As winter chill thaws into warmer spring weather, the craft activity is just one example of art projects that can help parents give active little hands a creative purpose.
No matter the medium, art enhances children’s development and helps kids advance their fine motor skills and learn important lessons about self-expression.
“Art is transformative,” says Christie Walser, executive director of “We believe that the art-making process contributes to social and emotional wellness — and healing.”
But where imaginations need a chance to run wild, parents’ creativity in coming up with ideas can also run dry. Below, some local art experts share low-cost, engaging art projects families of all ages can try at home this spring.
Be in Nature
The beauty of nature mandalas are that they can be done anywhere, at any time of year, by exploring your neighborhood or strolling through a local park.
During spring, this craft presents an opportunity to capture the renewal of the season by incorporating flower petals, seed pods and feathers into a circular pattern on the sidewalk, patio or grass.
Once you’ve gathered your items, all you need is flat ground to begin constructing a masterpiece. You can start by laying out a central shape, then adding in more items symmetrically, like an acorn in the top right quadrant and another in the bottom left.
“The artist should continue adding and rearranging until they are happy with it,” Olivo suggests. “Offer to take a picture for children who have trouble with the idea of it not lasting forever.”
Paper Flowers
While flowers bloom outside, Project Create knows that all you need to make flowers inside is a set of pipe cleaners, colorful tissue paper and a pair of scissors.
“There are always materials at home,” Walser says. “It’s great to upcycle and reuse things we have.”
Within minutes, what starts as a flat object can be transformed into a flourishing blossom. Lay three to five pieces of tissue paper together, begin folding all of them at once like a fan and alternate folds toward and away from you in pieces about an inch wide.
When the pages are folded into a long, thin rectangle, resembling an accordion, wrap a pipe cleaner around the center and twist it to create a stem that separates the paper in half.
Use scissors to cut both sides of the paper (you can experiment with cutting to a triangular point on both sides or making circular cuts to fashion a different type of flower). After cutting, carefully unfold each sheet toward the pipe cleaners at the middle.
“You can make as many as you like and make bouquets out of it,” Project Create teaching artist Evie Tobias explains in a video resource that guides you through the craft. “Then, you can decorate for birthday parties or use this just for your own enjoyment in a vase at your house.”
Be Like Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat is a world-renowned artist whose unique and raw style shares some similarities to a toddler’s approach to art.
The late Brooklyn-born artist made his name by combining street with fine art, incorporating bold colors and text with wayward scribbles, faces and creatures.
At Art Works Now, he’s a favorite inspiration because his work “helps move [young artists] away from this idea of perfect art — that things have to look perfect,” Olivo says.
Consider going to see Basquiat’s work through an exhibition on view at the Hirshhorn Museum through September 2026, or by checking out “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me at All” by Maya Angelou at your local library, which he illustrated.
A frequent motif in Basquiat’s work is a Like Basquiat, young artists can make their own crowns by cutting them out of cardboard and making them their own by decorating with what you have on hand, including crayons, paint, stickers, markers or paint.
When decorations are complete, use a hole puncher on either side and tie a ribbon so your newly crowned prince or princess can wear their art proudly.
Creating Happiness
Women’s History Month in March is the perfect time to take inspiration from longtime Shaw Junior High School art teacher and late D.C. artist Alma Thomas.
Thomas, the first African American woman to be included in the White House’s permanent art collection, was chiefly concerned with capturing beauty and happiness through mosaic artwork that often depicted the beauty she saw around D.C.
Some of her most famous works, which feature a kaleidoscope of bright shades, capture an eclipse, cherry blossoms and flowers near the Jefferson Memorial.
“I say everyone on earth should take note of the spring of the year, coming back every year, blooming and gorgeous,” Thomas once told The Washington Post in “The late Spring time of Alma Thomas.”
Take inspiration from Thomas by working with your children to cut a variety of colored construction paper into squares and rectangles, and then glue them into shapes on white paper to create your own mosaic.
Learn more about Thomas’ life and art style by reading “Ablaze with Color,” a biography picture book written by Jeanne Walker Harvey and illustrated by Loveis Wise.
Other Resources
Families can unlock even more art by signing up for workshops at Project Create or Art Works Now.
Art Works Now — which is open to artists of all ages — offers youth art classes for ages 2 to 17. Several of its offerings have sliding scale pricing, allowing families to pay one of three levels that they can best afford.
At Project Create, all classes are free. On the second and fourth Saturday of each month, the nonprofit hosts family art days featuring multidisciplinary workshops from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Once per month, the organization also welcomes families for wellness workshops where they can try out family group art therapy.
During the pandemic, while in-person classes were paused, Project Create’s teachers created 66 videos so that art could continue.
Six years later, that impressive resource archived on the Project Create YouTube page provides step-by-step instructions for making a mask out of egg cartons, lavender playdough, an origami paper crane and much more.
