Looking at Flowers in Art

At our recent planning meeting, Alicia and I were discussing the direction we felt the our study of Art in Nature was moving towards. We felt that the children clearly were still totally immersed in experiences that involved art, and were equally as engaged in experiences that involved life outdoors. We reflected on the learning and the different types of art experiences and types of media that the children were exposed to thus far, and realized that we had not yet explored paint. At Morning Meeting we asked the children to reflect on what comes to mind when they think of painting and nature.

A few of the children's responses were as follows:

painting pine cones

painting sticks

making sticks into paint brushes

painting trees

using pine needles to make brushes with

painting rocks

using rocks to paint with

leaf prints

printing with pine cones and rocks

painting flowers

painting a garden with grass...

The next day at Morning Meeting we introduced the artist Georgia O" Keefe using the beautifully illustrated book Portraits of Women Artists For Children- Georgia O'Keefe, by Robyn Montana Turner. This book is one of a series of picture-book biographies celebrating the lives and works of notable artists. Each book is illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artists original work collected from museums around the world. We learned that Georgia O'Keefe's love of nature was expressed through her love of painting and she especially loved to paint flowers that were' larger than life'.

We introduced a few simple techniques of enlarging and demonstrated how to enlarge a flower by making sure that each petal touches the edges of the paper. The children were excited to experiment with enlarging flowers and practiced this technique during Choice Time.