Some children and young people find it more difficult to open up about their feelings and talk about their grief, and that’s completely normal. Our ‘Make and Talk’ activities are designed to help grown-ups supporting these children and young people and provide a way to talk about feelings and emotions while getting crafty.
How our Window Art activity can help a grieving child
This activity also involves reflection and thinking about the person who’s died. If you start the activity and the child is distressed or uncomfortable, you could try one of our other activities instead and revisit this at a later date.
If you’d like to talk to one of our Support Workers about this activity or the child or young person you’re supporting, we’re here to listen. Our on-demand services are open on weekdays, and you can find out how to contact us at the bottom of this page.
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:
- 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
1. Start by cutting your greaseproof paper into a shape or the size you want it to be. You could do a square, circle, heart shape… When using scissors, make sure a grown-up is there to help you.
2. Lay out your coloured tissue paper. If you have lots of different colours, you could start to select which you’d like to use and why. 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. Take your time choosing these colours, this is a really important part of the activity.
3. Take the pencil and paper and create a colour code to remind you of your choices for your piece of art. For example, Green = they loved the park.
4. You can either rip the tissue paper into small pieces or ask a grown-up to help you cut it into shapes and small pieces.
5. Now you can create your collage! Ask a grown-up to help you use some glue to stick the tissue paper pieces to the greaseproof paper. You might decide to make shapes within your art, like a heart or smiley face, or you could create a mosaic collage.
6. Wait for all the bits of glue to dry – this might take a little bit of time – then you can tape your 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 your art.
Every time the sun shines through you can remember all those details about your person by looking at the different colours you’ve chosen or the shape of your design. You can keep your colour code in your memory box or somewhere safe to remind you as well.
Getting grief support
If you’re a young person who is struggling with their grief or you are an adult who would like help to support a child or young person after the death of someone, Winston’s Wish are here to help. Winston’s Wish provides support for children, young people up to the age of 25 and adults supporting them.
You can call our Freephone Helpline on 08088 020 021 (8am-8pm, Monday to Friday), email us on ask@winstonswish.org or use our live chat (open 8am-8pm, Monday to Friday). Our support workers are here to listen, can offer immediate guidance and resources and tell you what support we can offer and what might be most suitable for you.
Our Winston’s Wish Crisis Messenger is available 24/7 for urgent support in a crisis. Text WW to 85258.
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Activities for grieving children
Download our free activities to help grieving children express their feelings and remember someone who has died.
Make and talk activity: Thankful Tree
Use our free make and talk activity to help children stop feeling overwhelmed by grief and think about the things that are good in their life by making a Thankful Tree.