Materials
- large sheets of paper
- thumbtacks
- paintbrushes
- tempera paint in various colors
- sidewalk chalk in various colors
- spray bottles filled with water
- glue
- nature items
- construction paper
- pompoms, rickrack, and other scrap materials
- old toothbrushes
What to do
1. On a nice day, go outside and hang painting paper on trees using thumbtacks. Provide paintbrushes and different colors of paint and encourage the children to look around and paint what they see in nature. Encourage them to talk about their paintings.
2. Have a sidewalk chalk party! Talk about how the chalk colors are “pastel.” Encourage the children to draw chalk pictures on the concrete. Give them spray bottles full of water and let them “erase” their pictures and start again.
3. Take a nature walk and ask the children to collect leaves, nuts, twigs, and so on. Encourage the children to make nature pictures by gluing their finds to construction paper. Let them decorate the pictures by gluing rickrack and pompoms to the paper and splattering paint on with an old toothbrush.
-Lisa Chichester, Parkersburg, WV
