Miss Rumphius

April 12, 2013

Since we completely switched gears with what we were learning about and started our story writing (which we're still working on), I have been thinking about what else we wanted to do. When we had the very brief spell of nice weather and were able to clean up the yard a bit, everyone was suddenly very interested in growing plants, so I decided to pull out the botany study I have.

So we are working with all things plants, which will be even more fun and interesting once things start growing. I also pulled out the book, From Butterflies to Thunderbolts: Discovering Science with Books Kids Love by Anthony D. Fredericks. This is an interesting book which gives a lot of extended activity ideas for various children's books on various science topics. (I have a love/hate relationship with the book in that I love the idea and sometimes get some good ideas from it, but also find myself often thinking there could have been so much more.) But it did remind me of the book, Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. I had been wanting to do another big art project and this seemed a great book to use. Recently, the only thing I use Pinterest for is to look up good children's art projects and I wasn't disappointed. I found this great idea of using fingers to paint lupines on paper.

We pretty much followed the instructions exactly, but first I ran to the art store because we needed some really spring-y colors to paint the lupines with. (Anyone else feeling incredibly color deprived at this time of year?) Don't you love these colors?

The first step was to use a pastel to color the background. That was pretty easy and straight forward (especially since we took off the wrapper and used the flat of the pastel), so I didn't take pictures of that step. Then we needed to paint the stems. This was the only time we used paint brushes.

Then came the fun (and messy) part. I gave each child a plate with all nine flower colors on it and they took their fingers and painted the petals on the stems.

L. and A.

I love an art project which works for the wide range of ages that I have. Each child's picture turned out well, despite their age and ability. Here are the final projects.

TM (I couldn't get him to pose with his)

Beautiful, aren't they? I can't wait for them to dry so that I can hang them on our picture wire and enjoy some spring flowers in the kitchen.

And, you'll be happy to know that Rain was able to contact Snow before she arrived on our doorstep and she must have made other arrangements for her vacation.