When Art & Nature Journals Collide

With sickness lingering and the grumpies encroaching, we all wanted something fun to do.  Since school was called off only because of nasty germs and not because we’d planned a break, I wanted something that would be fun enough to satisfy but studious enough to be considered school.  I still wanted that break, albeit later.  With sunny skies beckoning outside, I wanted to make good use of those, and so our science journals were calling my name – but then everyone would scatter.

While we enjoy doing those science journals, I anticipated complaints from those still feeling yucky about having to measure and detail anything specific.

Since I’d been wanting an art day for quite some time, this seemed the perfect time to break out the paint, but … springtime blooms screamed for study.

I decided to combine the two.

Instead of working on our traditional nature journals, I sent the kids out to find a pretty bloom.  My Big Helper came back with a beautiful dogwood blossom, and My Little Man found a tiny indigo flower with five petals.  They cheered when I pulled out canvases and paints.

We settled onto the deck with art supplies all around us, and with a good story going in the CD player, they got to work.  They painted and we listened and everyone worked for several hours.

Friends came to visit and we stopped to play.  In the end, tiredness won out and we resumed painting later.

But the kids were super excited to keep going by that point.

Both kids continued to paint additional pictures after the first assignment, and both of them were careful to examine their flowers in detail and add those into their work.

I think we’ll be doing more collision-style art in the future.

Do you do nature journals?  I’d love to  hear about your style!

We typically use a simple notebook we decorated just for this purpose, but our canvas work this day was especially fun.  Here are some other things we incorporate to mix up our science work:

 

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A Little R & R