Homemade Kites

For anyone curious about the Waldorf Hand Kite featured during our Rainbow Week, here is a quick and and simple homemade toy tutorial. I love how the ribbons can be changed out to correspond to the seasons.

I purchased our wooden ring from ; I really love the selection and quality of materials that I have purchased from DCWoodcrafts and would highly recommend them to any Waldorf-inspired or Montessori-inspired family (we also have used their products to make homemade matching games). When it arrives, the ring is well-sanded but unsealed, so you have the option to leave the wood as is, varnish, or polish it with your choice of wax.

I prefer the look and feel of polished wood, when possible, so I opted to make a quick child-safe wax from 1 part beeswax to 4 parts oil. We used coconut oil, but I’ve heard that olive oil and jojoba oil are also great options (and there is from Montessori Services). This polish can be used on furniture or any other natural wooden toys that you may have.

It is such a great Montessori practical life activity for children that I personally find more relevant to our family than polishing silver, as we have plenty of wood to polish, but no silver in sight! I keep the extra polish in a small repurposed jar on a tray with a “polishing cloth” (rag) and small wooden figures to practice polishing.

During Rainbow Week, I tied red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple ribbons onto our wooden circle, but for Autumn, I’ve changed things up a bit.

To celebrate the changing of the colours, I selected warm red, orange, yellow, and brown jewel-toned ribbons. I cut them into 2ft lengths, and did a short double-knot to hold the ribbon in place (making the streamers 1ft in length). You could just loop the ribbon over the rings, but as Miss G has shown me, this is easy for children to remove and in the interest of safety and sanity (not having to retie the ribbons every day) I chose a knot that is more difficult for toddler fingers to untie.