Art is a great way to help your students develop language skills, strengthen their fine motor muscles, develop their sense of self, and explore artistic expression. The last week, my students enjoyed a few different fall themed art activities.
The first activity that my students enjoyed was painting pinecones. My students went on a nature walk and collected many of these and then turned them into beautiful masterpieces.
For this activity, I simply set out a few different colors of paint in a pallet and let my students decorate their pinecones. As they were painting, they enjoyed mixing the colors and watching how the colors swirled on their pinecones. Their conversations were colored with thoughts and comments about mixing primary colors and how to get a desired shade of a particular color.
They loved that they got to make the pinecone look just the way that they wanted it to look.
Another frequented art station last week was making leaf prints. Boy was this one messy but it was FUN!
To prep for this craft, I covered the art table with “construction worker” paper. I buy this by the roll at Home Depot. It’s super cheap and makes clean up a breeze! I added the leaves that we had collected on our nature walk and put out red, orange, and yellow paints on the table. My students then painted their leaves and pressed them onto their paper.
I wish that I had taken a picture of their finished work because the leaf prints came out beautiful!
Many of my students came back to this table three days in a row!
Another art activity that my students enjoyed was using our Montessori botany cabinet. For this, my students chose their favorite leaves and traced them onto thick cardstock.
Then they traced their pencil lines with Sharpie and then used liquid water colors to paint them.
This took a great deal of concentration and my students were very happy with their end results! They were proud of their hard work!
The last “Fall” art activity from last week was (the infamous) leaf rubbing. Every year I do this project and each year it is a huge hit.
The best part about most of these art activities is that you can find all the items outside for free! Half of the fun for my students was collecting the items that they wanted to use. I hope that you are enjoying the first few days of fall!!