I work at a nature center, and every summer we have day camps. In and of itself this is not gripping, but let me tell you, smashing berries and leaves into fabric? A gripping thing indeed.
You can do this activity with your preschooler too, and it’s a great way to create a summer beach bag, decorate a white hat, or make a funky bandanna.
Now to many people, natural plant dyes bring up ideas of hippie camp leaders sitting around with a group of children for hours upon hours. It is true that you can create dyes that take hours and hours to develop and set. Why you would do this with a four-year-old is beyond me, though. No, what I’m talking about takes mere minutes, and it’s a good way to relieve stress too.
Find some berries and leaves in the garden or at the grocery store. The best berries are the ones that you avoid normally, especially when your child is wearing a white shirt. Blackberries are the best, and raspberries and strawberries are good too. Blueberry juice is good but blueberries themselves actually have green centers and don’t dye much.
You can also use garden leaves, the juicier the better. They do not need to be edible, they just need to squish well.
If you’re feeling terribly ambitious, take a red cabbage, chop it, but it in some water, and add a cup of vinegar. Boil the cabbage for half an hour and you will have water that is purple but dyes everything a beautiful blue color.
Take the white shirt, hat, or pillowcase and lay it flat. If you don’t want the dye to spread to the other side, put a piece of corrugated cardboard in the middle. Squish the berries with a fork in a bowl and eat the chunky parts, then squish the juice onto the white fabric. Squish the leaves onto the fabric in other places. Add cabbage dye. If you actually want to create an image, add a cardboard cutout of the image in the middle of the shirt and squish around the edges.
Your preschooler will delight in staining shirts on purpose. After the shirt has been amply dyed, dry it on a clothesline until the stains set. Gently wash off any residues by hand.