There are so many good reasons to include natural art elements around your home or classroom. These beautiful natural elements can inspire children to create beautiful artworks. Nature has lines, patterns, and textures that can really make fun marks. Natural elements are easy to find around your environments like backyards, school yards, and parks. The other reason to use natural elements is to connect children to the outside world. By going outside to forage for these natural elements you have the opportunity to teach the importance of living biospheres. Here are some nature elements you can forage for:
Elements Nature elements like;
Leaves
Wood
Bark
Seeds
Sticks
Stones
Seashells
Another amazing reason to use nature is it demonstrates resourcefulness! You can teach children to go outside to find objects to create artworks, rather than going and buying stuff from the store. By using natural items found outdoors in your students’ environment can spark some good conversations!
You can also take your students outdoors through the seasons. They can learn about the seasons and what types of natural elements are there. I find interesting seed pods only a few times a year. I also can only get the right colored leaves in certain seasons. There is so much rich education right outside by using nature based elements.
I have written many Nature Based Art Activity Blogs:
This blog post is a part of a three-month series: Montessori Art in the Natural World. 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 including, nature crafting and crafting with natural objects.
Crafting With Natural Objects
There are so many fun ideas and engaging, hands-on ways to teach your Montessori students about nature through crafting with natural objects. It’s a wonderful gateway to introduce and connect kids to the natural world. Also, the outdoors offers an endless selection of natural objects that are just waiting to be found and designed into clever nature crafts.
These are a few commonly found, natural items that can be used for crafts:
Crafting with natural objects is a great segway to teach students part of the Coming of Humans Great Lesson!
So much of human history and culture revolves around crafting. Our ancestors used natural found objects for making important tools that helped them survive their day-to-day lives. They would collect stones and bones to use for grinding, scraping, mortars for cooking, and as weapons to protect their villages from attacks and predators. They used stones and seashells in gift-giving. In addition, seeds and feathers were often used in ceremonial activities. These nature crafting activities have been found across all cultures!
As society evolved, nature crafting evolved into a more leisure activity (although many people still used natural objects for daily tools too). Some nature crafts transcended both uses—being useful everyday items and also relaxing and calming to create! For example, in colonial times, the early settlers would craft candles from natural beeswax, make dolls from grass and reeds, and quilts were sewn together with naturally-woven materials. Crafting with natural objects was a normal event for so many generations. Unfortunately, many kids today have never been introduced to these types of nature crafts.
Many parents ask me the best ways to teach kids about nature and art and I always tell them to start crafting! Making crafts using only objects found in nature is an amazing way to have children slow down and become more present. This connects them not just to nature, but to our past and ancestors as well.
Take a look at ancient clothing and you can see natural objects—like bones, seeds, flowers, feathers, seashells and so much more—fastened and attached throughout the garments. Native American cultures used many objects found in nature to create elaborate headdresses too.
Crafting With Natural Found Objects | Montessori
Crafting with Natural Objects Helps Develop Fine-Motor Skills
Almost every crafting activity provides kids with excellent opportunities to develop their fine motor skills! Improving these skills is so important for kids to build their independence. Nature crafting activities like collecting (picking up) small natural objects, pasting, sewing, and cutting all require and strengthen fine-motor coordination.
Nature Crafts Can Teach Kids About Nature’s Limited Resources
Another great bonus of crafting with natural found objects is that they can teach kids important ideas and lessons about the limited natural resources of our world. It gives you a chance to teach students that although Mother Nature is plentiful when it comes to resources, today’s climate change and growing industrialism and commercialism mean we have to be diligent in protecting them. So, make sure you emphasize the need to gather the materials they find in nature responsibly. I love these types of crafts because they help our future leaders connect to nature and understand their role in protecting our environment and keeping our ecological systems balanced.
Where to Start: Crafting With Natural Objects Ideas for Montessori Students
Forging natural items and using them to create heirloom gifts and artworks is a great way for students to receive from all the benefits of crafting with found nature objects. They are learning history, strengthening their fine motor skills, and taking responsibility for our Earth.
Nature crafting activities for kids may include creating:
Here’s a bonus nature art activity for you! While your students are out collecting nature objects for crafting, have them take out their nature journals and record their observations. (For information and instructions on how to create a nature art journal, click here.)
Nature journaling is a relatively independent activity, but you should still guide your students to make sure they’re following scientific principles and standards. This Nature Journal Checklist will help you make sure 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 to journal or collect nature objects for crafting.
A Short Cut Just for You: Painting Curriculum For Kids
Along with crafting with natural objects, students can also use their found nature objects in painting lessons! My Kids Painting Practice & Process Curriculumhas 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! And, each lesson is featured as part of a sequence and includes all the information—materials, demonstration technique, and direct and indirect aims. So, you can simply follow the instructions and easily present the activity to your students.
Kids Painting Practice & Process Curriculum sets the foundation for their art education and will help them transform into little artists! To purchase the curriculum, click here.
Whether you’re a teacher trying to continue to teach your students via computer or a parent who is looking for a way to keep their learning moving forward, coming up with fun and easy educational activities can be a challenge. Giving them a break from all the online learning they’re doing is so important! That’s why I’ve created this at home art lessons download subscription — to keep your kids learning, while getting out their energy and having some art fun!
Why teach children art?
As parents, we want the best for our children. We want them to grow up to be intelligent, capable, brilliant individuals, and art is a wonderful bridge that can help them get there.
Art offers several benefits to children, including:
Helping kids develop and refine their fine-motor skills
Getting kids to think creatively and problem solve
Strengthening their emotional literacy and self-esteem
Providing a place for kids to express their emotions and creativity
Giving them an outlet to quietly burn off some energy
When you’re not equipped or don’t have the experience to teach art, it’s overwhelming and the temptation is to just give your kids some markers and hope they don’t use your walls or floor as a canvas. I’d urge you to resist that temptation!
There are two important reasons you want your children to do guided art lessons and activities:
It encourages them to develop new skills and can add an extra layer to how they learn other subjects. (This is especially key when they’re learning from home and may need extra help remembering lessons and connecting dots.)
It can ease your anxiety and give you peace of mind. When your kids are given a certain, specific art activity to complete—but it’s important to note the process is key, not the outcome—they’ll focus their energy and attention on what they are creating, leaving you with some time to focus on what you need to get done. This is where an at-home art lessons download comes in to help!
So many parents have been thrown into the role of teacher without a choice. And that’s just leading to stress! You have to balance not just being a parent, but also teacher, caregiver, entertainer, and maybe even chef—all while trying to get your own work done at the same time.
Yes, you love the time you have with your family, but sometimes a little peace and quiet is necessary. Plus you want to help your child embrace their creativity and independence, and you don’t want to stick them in front of a screen the whole day.
Where to Start: Pull Out the Right Art Supplies
Handing a marker to your five-year-old and hoping for the best isn’t the way to go about this. You want to make sure whatever art supply you’re allowing your child to explore is appropriate for their age. Regardless of how old they are, all of your children’s art supplies should be kid-safe and non-toxic. (If you’re unsure about the safety of your art supplies, I’d recommend buying items you know will be okay for your kids; all the art materials on Nature of Art for Kids are vetted and tested, so they’re safe and appropriate for kids to use).
One Step Further: Download My Kids’ Art Language Cheat Sheet
Once you’ve gotten your kids to start creating art, the next step is to help them learn to describe their artistic process and finished project. That’s why I’ve made an art language cheat sheet as a FREE resource to help you start using art vocabulary. You might not realize it, but you’re probably already using some of the Elements and Principles of Design vocabulary words (such as “color,” “line,” and “texture”) already!
When you start by giving your kids the right supplies, you won’t have to worry about them making a mess or coming to you every five minutes asking for help.
Download my Art Language Cheat Sheet for a list of art language terms. I’ve included definitions for each term as well, so you’ll feel more confident using them, knowing you’re using them correctly.
A Short Cut Just for You: At-Home Art Lessons Download
Here’s some good news: YOU can teach your kids art at home—and you don’t need any experience to do so. I’ve created the Kids Art At Home Lessons Download so that you can start presenting easy and fun art lessons to your kids.
This limited-time bundle features art lessons from each of the visual arts domains (drawing, painting, clay modeling, crafting, and color theory), so you’re actually laying a solid foundation for your child’s art education. You’ll receive:
1 Drawing Lesson
1 Color Mixing Lesson
1 Painting Lesson
1 Clay Modeling Lesson
1 Craft Lesson
PLUS, you’ll also get 50 art lesson ideas, a materials list, and video and blog resources so your kids can continue to do art every day while at home! All of this is delivered as a bundle; you’ll download each item separately, so you and your child can be introduced to and work through the activities one at a time so they don’t get overwhelmed.
You can purchase Kids Art At Home: A Bundle of Beginner Art Curriculum & Activities for Kids—which is available for just a limited time—by clicking here.
No part of this blog may be used or be reproduced in any manner whatsoever including reproducing, publishing, performing, and making any adaptions of the work – including translation into another foreignlanguage without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Nature of Art® Publishing P.O. Box 443 Solana Beach, California 92075.
With the Chinese New Year just a few days away (in 2020, it falls on January 25th), why not use the holiday as inspiration for cultural arts or history art lessons? Chinese calligraphy and many pieces of Chinese art focus on brushstrokes and can easily be incorporated into a Montessori art lesson plan.
Thousands of years ago, painting and calligraphy emerged simultaneously, largely in part because they require the same tools: brush and ink. You might be surprised to know though, that calligraphy was considered to be “fine art” long before painting ever was. In fact, it wasn’t until the Song dynasty (960-1279), that painting was finally thought of as art.
We can learn a lot about Chinese art—both painting and calligraphy. Namely, the importance and variety of the Chinese brushstroke.
The Phases of Art Development is a quick digital course that explains how art making can help students develop their creativity, fine-motor skills, and focus. More importantly, I share what types of projects students at every age are capable of completing safely, and without making a mess.
Sumi-e ink painting is perfect for children to learn because of its simplistic pictorial nature-inspired images created using simple brushstrokes and without very many details or added texture.
In fact, I would say sumi-e paint exercises are ideal for beginner painters to start out with since it focuses on controlling brushstrokes—balancing between thin and thick. This is actually how I start painting lessons in my classes.
I’m currently in the process of building out a complete lesson around Chinese brushstrokes, but here’s a look at the exercises I’ll be including.
Lesson 1: Load paintbrush without twisting the fibers
Lesson 2: Wipe excess ink off the brush using the sides of a jar or ink stone
Lesson 3: Practice making thin, long brushstrokes with the tip of the paintbrush
Lesson 4: Practice making thick brushstrokes with a larger amount of the paintbrush
Lesson 5: Practice making spirals and lines very slowly
Lesson 6: Practice making dots and dashes
Lesson 7: Practice making bamboo leaves, with simple short and long strokes all in only one try
Now, here’s a quick look at the Chinese New Year—feel free to share this information with your students!—and a way to practice brushstrokes to celebrate the holiday.
Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year is celebrated by more than 20% of the world. It’s the most important holiday in China and to Chinese people all over. It is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar.
2020 is the year of the rat.
2019 is the year of the pig.
In Chinese culture, pigs are the symbol of wealth. Their chubby faces and big ears are signs of fortune as well. Pigs have a beautiful personality and are blessed with good fortune in life.
Chinese New Year Art Project
Year Of The Pig, Chinese Sumi-e Ink Painting Lesson
The Chinese New Year is a great time to show students a way to embrace Montessori cultural arts. Here is a simple sumi-e ink brushstroke lesson. You will be creating—to celebrate the Year of the Pig—using simple brushtrokes and in just six steps.
The Phases of Art Development is a quick digital course that explains how art making can help students develop their creativity, fine-motor skills, and focus. More importantly, I share what types of projects students at every age are capable of completing safely, and without making a mess.
No part of this blog may be used or be reproduced in any manner whatsoever including reproducing, publishing, performing, and making any adaptions of the work – including translation into another foreignlanguage without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Nature of Art® Publishing P.O. Box 443 Solana Beach, California 92075.
