Mountain biome diorama

Facts about The Himalayan Mountains

• The name “Himalaya” derives from Sanskrit and means “Abode of snow”, which I think is a suitable name with all it’s snow covered glaciers.
• The Himalayan Mountains cover land in several countries of Asia: Nepal, India, Bhutan, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• Did you know that The Himalayan Mountain Range includes over 50 peaks that are higher than any other peak in the world?!
• The world’s highest mountain is Mount Everest, which lies on the border between China and Nepal.
• The Himalayan Mountain Range is a relatively young mountain range that has been created due to the Indian tectonic plate colliding with the Eurasian plate.
• Mount Everest attracts many mountain climbers. While experienced climbers have made it to the top, many have also died trying…

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 Materials needed to make a mountain biome diorama

• shoe box or other base
• piece of thick card board
• styrofoam
• acrylic paint (non-washable -watch your clothes!) and brushes
• glue-gun
• soldering tool
• string
• yarn
• wine cork
• short piece of wire
• toothpicks
• wool
• marker
• small wooden bead
• wooden pegs for people
• small pieces of fabric for clothes
• bamboo and small sticks (optional)

How-to steps

1) First, we visited our local library to find books about the Himalayas and the people who live there. We found “Discovering Mountains (World Habitats)”, by Janey Levy to be especially helpful.

2) Pick a fairly big shoe box, open the box and put the lid down as a base. Cut off some of the sides to make room for the mountain.

3) Cut a base of thick cardboard and glue on bottom of the diorama to make the box stay open.

4) Now it’s time to paint the base! My daughter used brown, grey, green and (of course) some white for the ground. The background (sky) she painted blue.

5) This is a step where mommy or daddy need to help -making of the mountain! We had several pieces of thin styrofoam lying around, so we glued a few of these together to make a big chunk. Then, using a soldering tool, I carved out the mountain. The tip of the tool is hot, so be careful! The heat will make the styrofoam melt and peel off very easily. (Really fun stuff!) I had originally seen this video by LizardLandscapes on YouTube, but of course I didn’t want to buy a hot wire foam tool only for this purpose. I used what I (hubby) had. (My husband wasn’t too happy, as I probably destroyed it.) If you don’t have this tool, you can always carve with a knife. Just keep in mind though, that styrofoam can be PRETTY messy…

6) When you have the shape of mountain desired, paint it. We used brown and grey. Then we dabbed some green and white on top, using a sponge with a tiny bit of paint.

7) When dried, glue mountain into place in painted shoe box.

8) Now when you have your basic biome, you can play around adding people, animals and other details.

Making people and animals

1) Making the people, paint hair, clothes and other details on the wooden dolls.

2) We read in the book that yaks are being used by the people living in the region, so we decided to make one. We used a wine cork to form the body and tooth picks as legs. Then we wrapped it all with fuzzy, brown yarn. I made the head by wrapping yarn around two fingers and gluing it to the body. A short piece of wire, bent and stuck into yarn-head, works as horns. We cut a piece of fabric to put on the yak and made him a load of sticks to carry. We also made him a halter from string. You can really use your fantasy here to make whatever YOU like.

3) The snow leopard we made more or less the same way. I did glue a small wooden bead to the cork to form the head, before wrapping it all in white fuzzy yarn. As a finishing touch we used a black marker to make small black spots on the leopard.

4) What would this mountain biome diorama be without a red panda? This was a hard one…I used red and white wool to form something that kind of looks like a panda… To make it more clear we also glued some pieces of bamboo to the diorama where we placed our panda.

6) As a finishing touch we thought we should have a climber on the mountain. The Himalayas are after all known for attracting many climbers who wish to reach the top. We hung a string onto the top of the mountain and attached one of our wooden dolls to the other end:)

Conclusion

Needless to say, my daughter was very proud bringing this mountain biome diorama to school. It was very fun trying a new technique, making the mountain.

Hopefully we have inspired you to make this project at home with your kids. Please shoot me an email or comment below if you have any questions or if you’d like to share pictures of your project.

As always: Have fun with your kids while working on this project!

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