Painting with Nature

On Monday, a group of Willows revisited an idea that began last week, creating paintbrushes from natural materials! The children carefully examined the sticks, grasses, and leaves we had collected in the forest, noticing that some had dried out. This observation led them to explore our playscape in search of fresh materials that might work better for painting.

Today, we carried our newly made paintbrushes back to the forest to see what kinds of marks they could create. The children painted together on a large sheet of paper, experimented with painting on leaves and making leaf prints, and even discovered that pine cones could be painted and pressed to make beautiful textures.

"I'm a paintsplorer!"

"I can make a leaf print, watch!"

"Look you can see the leaf on the paper, look look!"

"We painted the leaves, can we save them?"

The children were truly inspired by the materials around them with each new stick, leaf, or pine cone sparking new ideas and ways to paint. Nature not only gave us our tools, but also inspired the art we created! This created a beautiful connection between the art we have been studying and the forest, a place we love so dearly!

Other forest happenings:

Our friends in the Birch Room are wondering what we should call our little bear friend at the forest! They have asked each class to come up with a name for the whole school to vote on so that we can all name the bear together! We had a quick meeting at the forest to come up with a list of names to vote on and then we headed back to school to choose our favorite name!