Bringing a Little Nature Inside

It's amazing how fast time flies when it gets so close to the holidays. My last post was over two weeks ago and I have been so busy I haven't even had a chance to realize that it's been that long. Although we don't have many trees around us that drop leaves, we have had the chance to hit some good parks with beautiful trees. During our walks through the park I have encouraged Stinky to notice the changes (very slight changes as we don't have much of a fall here in California, it's still in the 70's) in our environment. We have collected leaves, twigs, acorns and other interesting items we have come across on the ground. As our collection grew I decided we needed to use some of the items in some art work.

This project was a two step process. First Stinky crumbled up leaves and smashed egg shells I had washed and dried. I put both items into little bowls after she had finished. This was a perfect sensory experience as she used her hands and then tried a few different tools to crush and crumble both materials. Then I put out a piece of contact paper on a tray. We haven't begun working with glue yet and this is a great age appropriate material to use to obtain stickiness. Stinky then proceeded to create using the artistic juices children use so freely. I included a small shaker of glitter I had made by punching tiny holes in a baby food jar. I wanted her to use the glitter freely but not so freely that we saw glitter for days. A mixture of natural and man made materials added a calming piece of art work with a little sparkle to catch the eye. When she was finished I backed it with more contact paper and hung it at her level on the window. Stinky is able to admire her own artwork and remember all those walks we took looking at the nature with in our environment.