We are pretty much half way through our Summer holidays. Its gone by so fast! When Neve broke up in July, I thought - 'BRILLIANT we have so long off together now for lots of quality time'.
I feel like I've blinked and 3 weeks have gone by just like that. We've been enjoying lots of outings and recently had a lovely family holiday. Its all been go go go - so it was like medicine for us to be able to enjoy a very pretty creative craft together yesterday.
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I don't know about you but as soon as I get an idea of an activity or set up I would like to try with the children - I buy all the stuff, pop it away and wait until the moment or interest arises to give it a go. I've had the bits and bobs for this craft for months now so it was great to put them into action.
You will need:
Scissors
Petals and Leaves
We always grow lots of different flowers in the garden. Some of them need regular de-heading to encourage more growth. Other flowers that are on the turn will begin to shed their petals. We walked around the garden looking for signs of this happening. I am a huge believer in not picking flowers unnecessarily because they are needed out there for bees and other insects. That has been something we were able to talk about during this activity. It was great because while we were busy discussing it the bees were super busy in our garden collecting pollen!
It wasn't long before we had a wonderful array of petals and leaf foliage that had been part of a recent cut back and tidy in the garden. Nothing had been pulled off just for this task and Neve seemed to take pride in that as she had left all the good flowers in the garden for the bumble bees.
Neve began by pulling out her sticky tape, cutting it into different sizes and popping them on her black piece of paper.
She initially found the stripping of the tape tricky. So I peeled a tiny little bit back and folded it over so she was able to do the rest herself. She continued to do several other pictures and was able to pull back the strips without any help from me which was great!
Before Neve could finish this Nature picture she was asking if she could do much, which amused me. It showed me just how much she was enjoying the activity.
Some of the leaves she cut up into pieces to use. It wasn't till afterwards I thought how great it would have been to have had shaped hole punchers out. Because this activity was enjoyed so much I think I shall set it up again and remember the hole punchers as an additional item.
More Nature Activities:
Lets take a look at this activity in action:
And here was the end result. There were a couple of random collages, two houses and a pair of alien eyes! I know the artwork wont last forever because the petals will begin to lose their colour and start to shrivel up, but this was all about process.
We spoke about the importance of not pulling flowers and we did a hands on observation of the bees collecting pollen from the flowers. Creativity unfolded. Patterns and colours were spoken about. I couldn't help but think how wonderful this activity would be in a classroom. 30 children given a range of nature materials (or even better given the freedom to collect themselves!) and the freedom to create as they please.
Too often I have seen lessons where there has to be artwork created like this. A forced outcome. This is my example and you need to copy this too. That isn't art for a child. Art is freedom. Its about making choice. Its about learning and developing skills. How can children do this if they aren't given the opportunity to communicate through art? Art is an expression. Its a way to understand a child's thoughts, feelings and interests. When was the last time you gave the children in your care the opportunity to independently create?
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