Painting without paint or a brush!!!

Outdoor Hour - Challenge #3 - Time to draw

For Henry, who doesn't go a bundle on doing art work, i try to steer away from plain drawing or painting, trying to make the experience a little more unusual if possible.

Most days we get out for a walk with our dog. So for yesterday's walk i took a bag to collect all kinds of things from nature that we might be able to use for an art project.

Henry got very into putting things into the bag...so much so we had an overflowing bag by our return home! During our walk i asked Henry to think of what we could use to draw or paint with, with some help he suggested sticks and feathers. I picked some blackberries and elderberries and got Henry to guess what we might use these for, he was very intrigued by the idea of making paint from them......even more so wh

en i told him we would paint with mud when we got home!

Back home i put all our findings out on a piece of paper and provided a fairly absorbent type of paper for Henry to create his art work on.

To start with i suggested Henry try painting with

mud, He chose a stick and created brown lines all over his page.

Next Henry tried out squashing black berries then rolling them with a stick....beautiful purple designs started to develop. Amazingly, every blackberry had a slightly different colour! Elderberries were squashed and rolled, and finally back to the mud with a rose hip and a feather to create some more brown patterns.

I was totally amazed how well this idea worked. After a good hand wash, the very unusual piece of art has pride of place on our fridge! - whoever said you needed paint and a paintbrush to create a masterpiece!!!

Outdoor Hour Challege - Ladybugs/Ladybirds

After a couple of weeks off the challenges with our move, we managed to complete on this week - our first in the UK.

This week we tackled Challenge #26 - Ladybugs and aphids.
At this point just let me explain that in the UK we call these little red & black bugs "ladybirds". In an attempt to have Henry speaking English again we used the English terminology for this challenge!!!!!!

Having noticed literally hundreds of lady birds flying around the garden, i looked at the list of challenges and was delighted to find one on ladybirds. However, on the day we did our challenge, the wind was blowing hard and i think we were rather short changed on our bug availability!

However, we went on an explore of my parents gorgeous garden in Suffolk, England. My parents have a great veggie patch, wild blackberries, apple trees and just so many flowers it is amazing. After about 5 minutes; no ladybirds. Armed with a magnifying glass and a pot to put a bug or two into, Henry had been pretty enthusiastic, but that started to dwindle as we found no lady birds. We did however find flies, and huge bumble bees.

Our eagle adult eyes however soon spotted the first lady bird, and after that another 8. I had Henry keep a tally on a piece of paper of every bug we found, then add them up at the end.

We caught a few for closer examination, and also had some crawl onto our arms for fun. Henry overcame his fear and even had one on his arm. Henry had a lot of fun using the magnifying glass when the bugs stayed still long enough.

Back in the house (after about half an hour outside) we journaled our experience. We discussed number of legs, spots, colours, how they moved and where they lived.

Henry drew around a cup and saucer to create the outline of the bug and then painted a great lady bird.

An couple of extra fun activities were:

Finger painting lady birds - where we put splodges of red paint on paper using our fingertips, then when dry we added legs, spots, heads, eyes, antennae etc.

Face painting - I found a face painting kit in a draw never used and Henry agreed to let me turn him into a lady bird - red face with black spots.......in return he painted my face as a tiger!

This challenge was a lot of fun for us.

Sunflowers up date

About 2 months after we planted our sunflowers, the time spent looking at their growth has rather reduced! We originally started the sunflowers as part of an Outdoor Hour challenge. However, with our move back to the UK imminent, i thought we should record their growth one last time.

Henry decided which wasthe tallest sunflower of the group we have.

He then used the tape measure to see how high it was. A massive 24"! Last time we measured we took a reading of 37cm (a month ago). We have changed into inches as i did not have enough squares on my graph paper to continue in cm!!!

After measuring, we counted the leaves. There were 18 leaves.

I asked Henry to draw what he saw & make a record of what the plant looked like. He started off really well with two sets of leaves on the stem & one set at the top....i then asked where the other 12 should go; they then got placed all the way down the stem wherever they could be fitted in, hence the great drawing of the sunflower plant.

I then removed a leave from the plant, Henry traced around it. we then discussed what he could see on the leaf. He could see "lines" - i explained these were veins, and showed him my veins and we found his in his arm. We discussed how blood moves in our veins and how the veins in a leave moved the food and water to help the plant grow. Henry then had a go at drawing the veins in the leaf.

We are very sad to leave our sunflowers before they have flowers, but they are going to a great home with one of Henry's friend's who has promised to update us with lots of photos when they flower.

Outdoor Hour - Challenge # 27 - Bees

This week's Outdoor Hour challenge for us is Challenge #27 - Bees

This week, Henry has been at camp at the Botanic gardens. Yesterday the class spent the morning studying bees and discussing bees and their activities. I thought I'd jump on Henry's enthusiasm and we could do this outdoor hour challenge with his new found knowledge.

I checked out the bee's in the Botanic garden today and found out some interesting facts and snapped a couple of good pictures.After much discussion on the subject, I thought we would start with a craft. A bee!

Using tissue paper (in balls and cut into squares), we designed our bee. I drew the basic body, head and wing shapes which Henry cut out.

I then tore tissue paper up and Henry helped me screw it into little balls; very good for developing strength and co-ordination with the hands. He drew stripes on the bee's body, the proceeded to stick the tissue paper on in stripes.

With the head, we used a more mosaic approach, using little squares of tissue paper. I offered Henry one eye or two - he chose two. For the wings, i was going to have him use tissue paper, but he announced that he would like feathers! Good thing i carry such stock!

We put the bee together, and it looks great.

After the art, we did a little writing practice and made our journal entries.

With a little help Henry drew the bee honeycomb shapes and practiced his letter b and B writing, and described bees a little.

The outdoor Hour - Butterflies

This week's Outdoor hour challenge was Challenge #22 Butterflies. If you have been following the blog so far you will know that we have raised our own butterflies from Caterpillar stage.

The whole experience of watching the middle stages of the life cycle of a butterfly have been fascinating for both Henry and I. I can't think of a more engaging way to learn about this subject.

After 32 years, I saw first hand, caterpillars close up, eating leaves, spinning silk and creating a large amount of poop for such a small creature!

The change into chrysalis was fascinating, as was the change in colour of the chrysalis over the 10 days they developed. This morning, to see the chrysalis wiggle intermittently and then watch a butterfly emerge as we ate our breakfast was a unique experience.

With live creatures and detailed photos on hand. Henry went about recording the appearance of his butterflies.

We started with finger painting our painted lady. Looking carefully at the photo to add detail in the right places.

Henry then did an amazing drawing of the butterfly with its wings closed (rather than open). With little guidance from me he drew the butterfly from the photo.

He made a point of telling me what he was drawing at each stage: the wings, its head (with a x in the middle of its eye), its body. It has 4 legs. It has 2 antennae with white dots on the end. It has a long tongue. I encouraged him to look carefully at the photo and count specific features such as circles and colours. Which he then carefully added to his drawing in crayons and pencils.

In addition to recording his observations in art form, Henry and I also discussed in detail how to describe the butterfly. I captured his thoughts and he wrote the key words.

We also went over the life cycle of the butterfly once more - a process I think Henry dosn't even need to think about anymore, because he has been exposed to it in such a physical way.

The Outdoor Hour - Squirrels

Today we took a nature walk around our neighbourhood to check out our local squirrels for the Outdoor Hour Challenge #45 - Squirrels

Now, it may be that we had our dog with us, or it maybe that they had all got a little scared and were having a sleep in after the storm last night......whatever the reason we did not see one squirrel!

However, we did spot what we think are two different squirrel nests.

We discussed everything about squirrels as we walked around....where we were likely to see them, where they lived, what they ate, what colour they were, how many feet, what their tail

was used for. So despite not seeing one on our walk, Henry was in squirrel mode for the walk!

On return home, i threw out a load of bread onto the back lawn, and within 10 minutes we had two squirrels in the back garden, which Henry watched, as they chased each other across the lawn, along the fence and up and down the trees.

Henry did a drawing of a squirrel, in oil pastels and water colours after we looked carefully at a photo i took recently in our garden. We also made a journal entry about squirrels.

We then read two squirrel books:

Nuts to You - By Lois Ehlert - a simple book with unusual illustrations about a squirrel who comes to someones house to get food.

A Squirrel's Tale - By Richard Fowler - An interactive book, where you move a small squirrel through flaps in the book on his hunt for his nuts. This has been a favorite of Henry's for some time and he knows the words off by heart!

The latest on our sunflowers.....

This is an update to my earlier post on growing sunflowers, which we started as part of the Outdoor Hour - Challenge #16 - Growing sunflowers

Much to my amazement, Henry's sunflowers are all going pretty strong. I guess they do have 6-8 foot to grow in a couple of months, but since our first entry on 29th April, when the seeds were planted, the plants have grown to a stunning 19cm to date!

Henry and I are measuring them every couple of days and recording on a bar chart their growth. We have chosen his school sunflowers to follow closely, so these are the stars of his blog.......must give them names!

We are also creating a journal entry, every time something new happens to the plants.

So here are our journal entries, and a few photos to go with them.

Henry's school sunflowers on 6th May - seven days after planting the seeds.

Some still had their seeds holding the leaves shut, whilst other seeds had popped off to show 2 leaves.

Some of the other 50 sunflowers we have planted!

Today, Henry's followed sunflower had produced two new small leaves. So wemade a journal page for this.

We potted on his school sunflowers at the weekend out of the cramped starter pot. Examining the roots as we went.

The outdoor hour

I have found a fantastic blog; The handbook of nature study.

handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com

It offers laods of inspiring and simple activities/challenges to get you and your kids out and about noticing the outdoors. It only requires 15 minutes outside for each activity, and this can be in your back yard, the street...wherever.

I will feature a

number of the challenges as we do them.

Our first outdoor challenge is #16 - Growing sunflowers.

This week we planted our sunflowers..alll 50 of them that were in the packet!

Henry got fully involved, puting the soil in the pots, puting the seeds in, covering them up, and watering them.

He got some really good practice with his listening skills, fine motor and measuring as well.

We then did our journal entry, so Henry drew what the sunflower seed looked like and then we described it.

We shall look forward to monitoring the growth of all our sunflowers, and their eventual move into the back yard!

The sunflowers this week.....day 1....not a lot to see!

A further part of this challenge was to take a walk in the neighbourhood to spot any flowers, and journal these. We found so many, its going to take a while to work through them! We found, violets, daffodils, tulips, hyacynths, blossom on the trees and azaleas. Henry and i shared the picture taking during the walk, and will document them gradually!

In the mean time, enjoy the slide show of what we saw!

Make a Smilebox slideshow