Fall Paintings

I've been meaning to take more advantage of the beautiful weather outside (while it lasts). I keep telling myself "plan outdoor activities, make lessons that pertain to outside." But in my laziness I have neglected doing so, until today. Painting outside has been on my "to do" list so i thought we would start there. We gathered up supplies, I had to make brown paint by mixing other colors. This was quite funny, because when we make our smoothies every morning the most basic one we do has strawberries and spinach with a few other things too. Our smoothie comes out almost everytime looking like dirt. So when I asked the girls what colors I needed to make brown Ainslee quickly answered "brown like dirt mommy!" I said yes, remember our smoothies are brown, what colors do we put in them? They both immediately said "GREEN AND RED!" So thats where we started. I added a little bit of white and a touch of yellow as well.

I decided since we were painting outside I didnt want them to use the regular brushes and things, so we gathered up "fall" things from the yard, as well as some kitchen utensils and we went to town.

Here are the supplies we gathered

2 girls ready to paint, dont ask me why Kaylee has that look on her face
our supplies from inside, including brown, yellow and orange paint

I showed the girls how to make a stamp out of a leaf

Kaylee preferred the kitchen utensils, while Ainslee enjoyed using the things we collected outside

trying to make her own leaf stamp

adding all the colors

pushing it down

"look what I made mommy"

but then she got a bit upset at the tiniest bit of paint on her fingers, i ignored it and she seemed to be ok for a few minutes. I think the messiness was why she wanted to stop painting so quickly. She was ready to come in and wash her hands

painting with pine needles

Overall, it was a super fun activity that they both enjoyed. We ended up doing 2 sheets of paper, the second one just turned into a big blob of mixed up paint. I wonder when they are going to figure out the whole "art" thing. They would rather just paint in one spot until they make a hole in the paper. Oh well, at least they enjoyed themselves.