This blog post is a part of a three-month series: Montessori Art in the Natural World: Kids Nature Journal Color Lessons. This series is about growing kids’ knowledge about the natural world by taking them outside their home or classroom and challenging them to create focused art, based on the nature around them. Every aspect of nature—seasons, layers of the earth’s soil, energy, rocks and minerals, fossils, landforms, water, flora, fauna, the atmosphere—can all be represented and expressed through art lessons. The water texture art techniques in this blog will help your students learn how to paint water to use in their nature art projects. Drawing and painting water is an excellent way to teach students more about nature and our world’s waters!
With 71 percent of the earth’s surface being covered with water, chances are, your kids will encounter drawing or painting some kind of water feature in their artworks or biome field notes. Luckily, there are a ton of water texture techniques that can be explored for learning about our ocean salt water, fresh water, frozen ice formations, and water within our atmosphere. Focusing on our planet’s natural water systems is also a great way to connect them to nature! Another fun way to engage students in studying zoology is to draw or paint whales, sharks, rainbow fish, crocodiles, eels, and algae in the water they live in.
Teaching students a unique way to express water images will make learning about the science aspects of lessons a lot more fun. Drawing and painting water textures open up childrens’ curiosities and will lead to interesting and enriching conversations within your Montessori classroom.
Fun Water Art Learning Prompts:
You can continue to guide your students’ interests and curiosities by exploring the questions:
- Why is the ocean blue?
- Why do some parts of the ocean (or large lakes) look darker or lighter? (This is also a great question to help them explore color values and color tones!)
- What is a coastline?
- What causes waves in the ocean? Why aren’t there waves in lakes?
- How much water covers our planet?
- Why is the largest body of water salty?
- What kind of animals live in the different depths of the ocean?
- How do freshwater biomes and saltwater biomes differ?
- How are sea mammals and fish different?
- Why is water so important to human life?
- How can we protect our planet’s water systems?
Learning About Nature By Painting Water Texture
Kids learn by connecting information through the process of expressing, which leads to meaningful learning. As a teacher, you can lead students through many engaging water texture art lessons which will help them make their artworks unique and personal. Rather than students slapping down blue paint to represent oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, or streams, they can look closer to the natural patterns found in water and try to replicate the movements and textures in their artworks.
Water texture drawing or painting can be explored in primary and elementary grades. Younger students will need more hands-on assistance and need to work process-based, giving them more time to discover and explore. Lower and upper elementary children will be able to do the projects completely independently by following demonstrations and steps. There are many techniques to create water texture art with interesting lines and patterns, such as:
- Crayon wax resist
- Salt sprinkled over watercolor
- Bubble wrap
- Painting yarn to create line textures
Where to Start: Bubble Wrap Water Painting Montessori Art Activity
There are so many ways to create water texture drawings and paintings, but this technique is one of my favorites! It’s so much fun for kids and easy to do too. (Plus, it helps you recycle any bubble wrap you get from packages!)
One Step Further: Download My Montessori Nature Journal Checklist
If you’re lucky enough to live by a body of water you can take your students to, I highly encourage you to have students make and record their observations in their nature journals. (For information and instructions on how to create a nature art journal, click here.)
To download the checklist for FREE, click here.
I created this Outdoor Nature Journal Checklist to help you guide your students in their observations and recordings to make sure they’re following scientific principles and standards. This will help ensure your students are including data that helps them implement both scientific and artistic principles during their expedition. Print it out or save it on your phone so you have it with you the next time you lead your students outside.
A Short Cut Just for You
I like painting water texture activities because it opens up a whole world of painting for kids. It shows them how you can paint with tools other than fingers or paintbrushes! However, it’s essential that kids do learn paintbrushes and brushstroke techniques to help them develop their painting skills.
My Kids Painting Practice & Process Curriculum has 57 master lessons that take kids from setting up a paint station and holding a brush all the way to creating beautiful nature landscapes and painting different types of animals! Each lesson is featured as part of a sequence and includes all the information—materials, demonstration technique, and direct and indirect aims—you need to properly present the activity to your students.