How to Make a Deciduous Forest Diorama
Making a deciduous forest diorama is a fun activity to do with children of almost any age, since you can adapt your biome to illustrate a wide variety of deciduous forest plants and animals and employ different levels of craft skill. Whether you just want to depict a few plants and animals or create a deciduous forest diorama with realistic habitats and animals sized to scale, you can accomplish your project using the same basic steps and materials.
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Things You'll Need
- Empty shoe box
- Tempera paints (blue and brown)
- Construction paper (multicolored)
- Cardboard or card stock scraps
- Computer with Internet access and printer
- Printer paper
- Scissors
- Glue
- Clear adhesive tape
- Toothpicks
Instructions
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1
Remove the lid and any tags or labels from your cardboard shoe box.
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2
Use tempera paint to color the inside of the box, painting blue on the bottom and three sides of the box for the sky and medium to dark brown on one of the long sides of the box as the base color for the ground.
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3
Cut out construction paper mountains or hills for the background, and tear or cut small pieces of brown, red, orange and yellow construction paper to form fallen leaves for ground cover in your deciduous forest diorama.
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4
Glue your construction paper cutouts to the background and ground of the deciduous forest diorama and allow to dry.
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5
Cut out the shapes of a few trees that might be found among the deciduous forest plants and glue the cutouts to the bottom of the box to form a background layer of deciduous forest plants.
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6
Position the box for your deciduous forest diorama so that it is sitting on the side of the box that you have chosen to be the ground, with the bottom and opening of the box perpendicular to the ground.
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7
Cut additional trees out of construction paper. Cut a notch of about 1/2 inch in the bottom of the cutout, and cut out a stand with a notch to fit.
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8
Cut out deciduous forest animals for your diorama. Use pictures online to draw your own, or simply print pictures of animals from your computer. As with the trees, cut a notch and a notched stand to fit.
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9
Position the deciduous forest plants and glue or tape them in place.
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10
Position the deciduous forest animals around the plants, placing some animals in the trees, like squirrels, raccoons and birds, as appropriate. Glue or tape the animals in place.
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11
Label the animals or plants by gluing or taping labels to toothpicks and gluing or taping the toothpicks to the corresponding plants and animals.
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Tips & Warnings
Glue any paper cutouts to cardboard or card stock to make sturdier elements for your deciduous forest diorama.
Remember to write your name on the outside of your deciduous forest diorama and include a legend that explains which plants and animals are which.
