I love pattern and colour and this project delivers both in abundance. Making mandalas is a great way to talk about repeating patterns and symmetry with your children.
The word mandala is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning 'circle'. Mandalas are found in different cultures and contain special or even spiritual symbols. Mandalas can use different colors, geometric or organic shapes, but they all have something in common: RADIAL SYMMETRY. Mandala art begins with a central point and all other lines, colors and symbols radiate out from that central place.
My little one (nearly 4) loved all the colours and fun materials but didn't really understand the idea of repeating a pattern around the mandala and just wanted to make her own composition (she generally marches to the beat of her own drum), her creation was a 'rainbow bunny' which I'll share with you later. My eldest (7 yrs) understood the idea of a mandala and got to work composing his own pattern.
MATERIALS:
- A large piece of cardboard
- Materials to collage including wooden cutlery, paper straws, wooden craft sticks, wooden beads or pom poms.
- Item from your household recycling like bottle tops or bread bag tags
- Natural materials like leaves and seed pods
- Paints
- Glue - we stock a great multi purpose craft glue in our online shop
- Colourful dot stickers
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HOW TO:
Begin by cutting a large circle of cardboard to use as the base for your mandala. Ours measured 50cm in diameter. Use the rest of your cardboard to cut out shapes to build your mandala with. I cut a selection of triangles and semi-circles.
To help your little one build their mandala, divide your circle into 8 equal sections by drawing on the cardboard with pencil. Arrange an interesting selection of materials to collage with and begin building your mandala pattern.
Once all your collage items are glued into position, now it is time to add some colour with paints.
Once our paint was dried, we decided to add in a few colourful bottle tops from our household recycling. We glued these on using a hot glue gun.
For that final touch of pattern, we added colourful dot stickers to our beautiful mandala art.
This is the 'rainbow bunny' creation my little one decided to make instead. I totally LOVE her style! This awesome creation is going in the 'keep forever' pile and is currently displayed on our kitchen wall.
For an alternative to using plastic items from your household recycling, you could use natural materials like leaves and seed pods to make a beautiful nature mandala. The added bonus of this is that your artwork will be compostable!
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 Natural watercolour paints
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 Recycled newspaper pencils
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 Natural paint pigments
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 Bees wax crayons
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