Studying and Painting Flowers

My eldest son and I had been reading books on nature, ecology and environment in the past days.  We read about flowers, pollen, leaves, photosynthesis, trees, roots, clouds, and rain from them aside from many other things.  We had discussions about them while we were reading and after.  Today, we had finger painting as part of reinforcing our learnings from the past days. 

 

We painted flowers of different colors.  Even our baby Mateo who turned ten months old yesterday joined in the fun.

 

 

 

Here's how we did it in case you're interested to do a similar activity.

 

1. We looked for coins of different sizes.  We used a 25 centavo coin and a five centavo coin.

 

2. We mixed some paints to get our desired colors.  We mixed red and white to get pink; then blue and white to get light blue.  At some point, I wasn't sure which paints to mix to get purple or lavender.  I suddenly forgot.  What I didn't know was that while I was thinking and preparing our other painting supplies, my eldest son was already mixing the light blue paint with the pink paint.  He proudly showed it to me we when he saw that the paints he mixed turned lavender.  :)

 

3. We positioned the coin first on the bond paper. 

 

4. Next, I painted Yanthy's thumb with pink paint.  He pressed his thumb around the coin repeatedly to form the flower's petals, brushing paint on his thumb every now and then whenever the paint gets completely wiped out.

 

5. It was Mateo's turn after Yanthy finished painting his flowers.  We used light blue paint for Mateo's flowers and a smaller coin.  We painted his big toe instead of his thumb because he still likes to put his fingers in his mouth.  I was afraid that Mateo would ingest some paint when he puts them in his mouth should we fail to remove all the traces of paint on his thumb.

 

6. It was my turn after Mateo.  I used shades of lavender for my flowers.  I followed the same procedure ealier.

 

7.  After all the petals were painted, Yanthy and I finger-painted (using our pinkies) the middle of the flowers including the flowers made by Mateo.

 

8. Next, we painted leaves around the flowers using light green paint (a mixture of green and white).

 

9.  We air-dried our painting.

 

10. We packed away. :)

 

 

It was another simple, fun, and creative way to bond with my kids and document Yanthy's finger prints and Mateo's toe print.  I also liked what Yanthy said while we were painting.  He said that these flowers are for Mama Mary.  I took that opportunity to remind him that it's Mama Mary's birthday month this September so his idea to dedicate those flowers to her is very apt.

 

By the way, here are the books we were reading these past days.