A window on grief: Craft activities for children

June 2024

Our charity partners at the child bereavement charity Winston’s Wish have been sharing tips with us throughout the year to help parents and guardians support grieving children. This month, they share an inspiring window art activity to help young people open up about their feelings…

It’s not uncommon for children and young people to keep their grief bottled up.

To help children open up and feel safe talking about their feelings around grief, our friends and partners over at Winston’s Wish have created a series of ‘Make and Talk’ activities. These activities are designed to help grown-ups supporting bereaved young people to provide a way to talk about their emotions while getting crafty. 

Here we explore the craft of window art. 

Window art is a great way to make simple yet beautiful crafts to hang in your home while allowing the young people in your life to reflect and think about the person who’s died. 

If you start the activity and the child is distressed or uncomfortable, it’s ok. Simply try and revisit this at a later date. 

Creating window art is a fun, simple way to interact with the child while they’re busy getting hands on with the craft. You can then display their art in the window, which is great if you don’t want to stick things on your walls!

Make window art

You will need:

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·       Greaseproof or baking paper (preferably white so more light can get through!)

·       Coloured tissue paper

·       PVA glue or glue stick

·       Scissors (for grown-ups only!)

·       Lollipop sticks or similar (optional)

·       Paper or notebook

·       Pencil

How to make window art

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1.         Start by cutting the greaseproof paper into a shape or the size your child wants it to be. You could do a square, circle, heart shape.

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2.              Lay out the coloured tissue paper. Try to include as many colours as you can so you can start with questions such as ‘what made you choose pink?’ Different colours might represent something about the person who died, for example their hair colour, eye colour, favourite t-shirt, the colour of their car, or something they loved… like yellow sunshine or red strawberries. Encourage the young person in your life to take their time choosing these colours. This is a really important part of the activity.

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3.         Take the pencil and paper and create a colour code to remind yourself of the colour choices for the piece of art. For example, Green = they loved the park.

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4.         They can either rip the tissue paper into small pieces or yourself or the young person taking part could cut the paper into shapes and small pieces.

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5.         Now it’s time to create the collage! Simply take the glue and stick the tissue paper to the greaseproof paper. Suggest shapes within their art, like a heart or smiley face, or even a mosaic collage.

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6.         Wait for all the bits of glue to dry – this might take a little bit of time – then pick a place your child or young person can tape their art to the window to let the sunlight shine through it! If you have lollipop sticks, you could create a frame for the edge of their art.

 

 

Every time the sun shines through, your child or young person can remember all those details about their important person by looking at the different colours and design. Keep a record of the colour code so together you can look back and remind yourself of those special moments. 

Where to get support

If you are supporting a bereaved child or young person who is struggling with their grief, please call Winston’s Wish on 08088 020 021 (8am-8pm, weekdays), email ask@winstonswish.org or use their live chat (8am-8pm, weekdays). They will be able to offer guidance, information and support.

You can also access the Winston’s Wish Crisis Messenger which is available 24/7 for urgent support. Text WW to 85258.