Fall is almost here!

Since we have the first day of fall this week, Gi and I decided to do some art in honor of the changing seasons. The fact that I've had this eco-friendly paint stashed in my art cabinet for over a year without a worthy project to test it on, was just the inspiration I needed to break out of our morning routine and usher in some creativity.

Glob paint was sitting on a shelf in a local sustainability store and it called my name.  Now, I've tried making my own paint formulas with spices and veggies I've had on hand and they've done pretty well especially for finger paints when you know your little one's hands are going to go straight from paint cup to mouth. But, the copious amounts of spices and veggies needed to create the colors made it almost as expensive to produce my own as it would be to buy such natural-based paints. Glob isn't cheap but the great thing about it is that you mix the paints from dry powder so you can decide how much of each color you need at any one time. The result is a product that the kids can help make from scratch (measuring the water and dry pigment) and have lots left over for future projects.

Okay enough product advertising and on with the actual art! It was pretty easy, novice stuff this morning. I just cut a long strip of easel paper, drew the outline of a tree on it, cut up additional sheets to add to the width and drew branches. Then, we taped it to the wall and I continued cutting out leaf shapes until Gi got antsy and whined to start painting.  So, I now have quantified her attention span in terms of paper leaves: 12 to be exact. She got to paint her leaves with her new veggie colors (beet red was her favorite) and then Noa joined us and shocked us both by grabbing a paintbrush and doing the same! I thought for sure she would just do a little finger painting but I underestimated the power of big sister role modeling. Of course she would want to do it exactly the way Gi did!

Then, we had fun with the tape roller and Gi got to stick all her leaves on our fall tree! I can't wait to add more branches and leaves and watch the tree grow. I think I will leave the tree up on the wall and as we get farther into fall we'll have fun moving the leaves off the branches, letting them "fall" to the ground and eventually make a leaf pile at the base of the tree. When the branches are bare we'll get to talk about winter and that's the beauty of a home school lesson on the changing seasons, you start with a simple idea and can transform it, evolve it into an ongoing lesson theme! I can already imagine using this tree to talk about leaf structures, tree species etc. We're going to have so much fun this fall! 
So, how will you usher in the new season?