twolittleajs: Painting with nature

Thursday, 18 September 2014

Painting with nature

Yesterday whilst walking through a park to meet Nana, we stopped and collected lots of conkers that had fallen on the ground, so today I decided to use these along with some fir and pine cones, and create a little sensory box for Alyssa. We took them with us to a local craft cafe that we go to occasionally, which was a little bit calmer than usual for me with just the one, but I still was unable to sit down for longer than five minutes as Alyssa is potty training, and found the toilets fascinating compared to her potty, especially when I flushed it. I very rarely get to do any of my own crafts at these cafe events, as I am usually wit the children, but I do find just being by creative people can be very inspirational. The venue had lots of Autumnal things on display, beautiful browns and golds, from bunting to wreaths created from Autumn leaves, and whilst playing with Alyssa and the sensory box, the cafe members started to discuss painting with the fir cones and things which I thought was a great idea.

I found it wonderful watching Alyssa play with the conkers, counting them "1,2,3,4,8" which was amazing to me, as having to always fight for attention with her brother always talking over her, or saying "mummy mummy" all the time, I had never previously realised she could count at all!! I feel like such a bad mum sometimes that she hasn't had as much attention as Arthur had as a first born, but then moments like these tell me she is doing just fine as she is. Her favourite game was definitely turning it all out then putting it back in the tub again, occasionally counting as she did.

Once we got home I got out some brown, yellow and orange paints, and thinking of marble painting, decided to let Alyssa roll a conker through paint to great a painting. She didn't quite understand tipping the tub, and did try a few times to just pick the conker up and paint with it instead, but she seemed to enjoy the noise that it made when she did shake it. Next we tried painting with the fir cone, by rolling the cone in paint then rolling along somer paper, and also a bit of leaf printing with some leaves we found on the way home, the effect was pretty hit and miss but I think she enjoyed getting her hands covered in paint, it seemed such a shame to stop her to have dinner!!