Nature Painting

Summertime is a fun time for a toddler. It is a fun time for mommy & daddy as well. My daughter loves the outdoors. Just being outside makes her smile. It is very difficult to get her back in the house once we have taken that first step out the door.

We have been spending so much time on outdoor activities, playing ball, going to the park, riding bikes, etc… It has been wonderful, but I have found myself missing our arts & crafts time together. For me, teaching Mai creativity is just as important as teaching her ABC’s.

So this week, we combined the two & had a painting picnic in our backyard. I told Mai we were going to paint rocks & leaves, so we went around the yard & gathered some up.

I wiped down the rocks and the leaves and we started painting using the rocks first. The rocks made a lovely canvas. The tiny crystal granules in the rock glistened with each paint stroke causing a few “Oooooooohs & ahhhhs” from my daughter. “So sparkly.” First Mai helped mommy paint her rock in purple before creating her own rock masterpiece. I would tell her, “Mai paint with green” & she would make swirls with the green, “Now do pink” & she would dab her rock with pink. She thought this was a funny game.

The leaves were fun too. I showed Mai what I was doing which was painting a different color between the veins of the leaf. “Ooooooh, good job mama.” This is still a bit too complicated for her 2 year old hands, but she did a great job adding different lines & swirls on her leaf.

With my daughter’s attention span as it is there was a lot of other activities squeezed in between brush strokes & the completion of our nature works of art, but it was a fun craft with free canvas and one we could enjoy in the sun.