Sammy and I recently had quite the fun afternoon painting bits of his nature collection and then painting with bits of nature. For quite some time now, he has kept a nature box, where he stashes away things he finds on our daily adventures, from twigs & leaves to stones & moss. Feathers have their own special place. The actual box where he stores all of this is overflowing and so I knew that some arts & crafts projects were on the horizon.
I started out our art day by suggesting we paint some of his larger rocks & stones. We just used washable paints, nothing special.As he played with painting the stones, I suggested he tried using the stones to paint a piece of paper. He covered stones with paint and rolled them across the paper. In the end, he enjoyed painting the rocks themselves more.Next, we tried using pine cones instead of paint brushes. We simply dipped the pine cones in paint and rubbed them on paper. This technique creates really pretty textures and you can make interesting rainbows if you dip the pine cones in multiple colours at once.Sam really wanted to try painting with some larger sticks, so I dug out a large board we could paint on.Within a few minutes of painting with sticks, Sam began to drum on the board with the sticks. For the next hour, he & I dipped our sticks in paint and drummed on the board. Sam sang & chanted too. Our afternoon became an art & music therapy session!Here’s our finished collaborative painting made with drumming sticks.I love how our art day together evolved. I tried not to give a lot of actual instruction and just go with some of his interests. I did have to restrain him from going all out with the drumming, so we didn’t end up with paint on the walls & ceiling. If you want to let them go really wild, I suggest taking this activity outside 😉I always look forward to our art & craft time together. Sometimes it ends in a frustrating mess. Those are the days you just give up on and move onto other things. But there are other times, special days where our creativity blooms together. Those are days that I will always cherish.
