Nature Art

Our lessons over the past few weeks have all been dedicated to World Environment Day - 5th June.  This date is more celebrated than Earth Day (April 22) here in Australia.  It is so important that we respect our environment and try to make as small as footprint as we can on this wonderful planet that we live on.   I always teach the children that various materials can be used in their artwork, many natural or recycled.  Nature art teaches them to appreciate the natural resources around them.  Recycled art teaches them to reuse items and not throw them away.

We started with Rock Art (post coming soon), then moved to Nature Art (this post) and finished with Recycled Art (post coming soon).  Sometimes the themes ran into each other (you will see some rock art featured in the nature art and we used recycled frame backings in rock art and nature art).

This one captures the whole three (recycled frame backing, rock art owl and nature art)

This Nature Art Lesson also tied in nicely with our school Art Competition giving the children an opportunity to make something for the competition during class.  Since I have children from various schools, I also held a mini art competition within my art classes, awarding a prize to the best Nature Art Work made over my 3 classes.  Well done to Immy Buchanan for being the winner.  Immy won a watercolour paint set and brushes. 

One of the wonderful things about doing nature art is the collecting of the nature items for the artwork.  Its a fun activity itself and my own children and I had a lovely time going down to our local beach and park to collect as much as we could from around us. 

What you need:

• Natural Materials (shells, stones, bark, seed pods, seeds, flowers, leaves, gum nuts, acorns, autumn leaves, berries, feathers, sticks, sea sponge, sea glass, clay etc)
• Glue (white school glue) or Glue Gun
• Paint (optional)
• Paper (optional)

How to:

• Lay out all materials for children to choose from (or send them off to find their own - I would do this if we were holding the lesson in a park)
• I didn't give much direction, I just let them use their imaginations
• I hot glued items where necessary
• I provided paint, brushes and paper if they wished to paint

The Results and our Winner:

And here are some of the wonderful artworks produced.  Well done to all the children in my classes - I love how creative they were! Congratulations again to Immy.  I would also like to congratulate my daughter Poppy, who being the teachers daughter doesn't get to be the winner (I also judged the school comp so she couldn't win that either) yet I know she worked extremely hard on her piece and she should be proud of what she achieved (it was all her work not mine at all)!

Immy's winning Fairy and Frame with ladybird

Poppy's creation

Cheers
Fiona