What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow. ~ Martin Luther

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Straw Painting~ Fall Trees



I had great intentions for doing consistent art projects with the children last year, and while we did do some, they were sporatic and less often as I had hoped for.

So when this year rolled around, I vowed to TRY HARDER!

It's turning out to be quite fun, actually.
I am a MAKER (love, love, love it!) so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I am enjoying it. The children LOVE it~ but that goes without saying. I have never met a child yet who didn't jump on the chance to be artistic when it was given to them.

I have a TON of Fall crafts already lined up which, for me, is the hardest part ~figuring out what to do. It feels good to have a plan.

This week the children and I worked with paints and paper~and straws.

We painted an entire sheet of paper in every fall color (with brushes) and in any way we wanted. Then we put a nice big thick line of watery black down the middle of the paper.



Taking a straw, we painted a nice thick, WET line down the middle of the paper and blew through a straw pushing the black paint every which way. You can sort of "steer" the paint by how you might like it to be. It is REALLY neat to see the paint spread~as it does so, the branches almost appear to GROW.

Super cool.



The kids had an absolute ball. It was a great activity for any age child, too, because it could be as easy or complex a picture as they choose~the METHOD is super easy.

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6 comments:

Bonnie said...

This is a GREAT idea! I started out great doing projects with the littles, but I petered out after "dried bean art".
We may try this tonight, if I can find some straws.
Post (please?), your other art/craft/ whatever projects, because I need the inspiration/motivation.

Jennifer said...

Those are great pictures. I like this idea so much that I think I might try it with my daughter.....what kind of paint and paper did you use? Our paper seems to really adsorb liquid paint so I don't know if it would work to blow out....hmmm we will see.
Thanks for the idea!!!

Rebecca said...

We used watered down acrylic paint and I used 10x10 inch scrapbook paper~just because I had it.

Heather @ Marine Corps Nomads said...

Those turned out really well. Munchkin says it looks cool, and she wants to try it. lol!

Full of Grace said...

I forgot about making these- Samuel would LOVE it! Thanks for the reminder :)

Mrs. Bowen said...

I would love to see more of the projects you do with the kids. I also am making an effort to be more consistent doing art with the kids. We all love doing it once we get started- it's just getting started that's hard sometimes. Have you visited the website "Crafty Crow"? They have some neat ideas.

Mrs. Bowen