How to Engage Kids with Springtime Nature

Many times, an art lesson encompasses more than art concepts.  Stories are told.  History is recorded.  Ideas developed.  Personal expression occurs.  As a matter of fact, I listen to children as they make art and I witness all the above and more. How to Engage Kids with Springtime Nature led to this lesson which include Caterpillars and lines. Use line and shape to develop leaves and fun caterpillars in motion.

How to Engage Kids with Springtime Nature

Kids naturally like to explore the outside. It is not healthy for them to be stuck indoors all the time. Sometimes it is fun to bring the indoors with us. One natural things are Caterpillars which are a popular theme for stories and art making. So I engaged my children with springtime nature suing the caterpillar theme. Then I instructed the lesson with my students in grade k.

Teaching kids the names of lines

Caterpillar Lines comes into play with the leaves.

How to engage kids with springtime nature started with my children using their hands as a guide to draw leaves that are nice and big for the caterpillars. First they laid their hand on part of the paper and choose a line to draw around it. Now leaves can be many different shapes depending on the lines chosen. Therefore to emphasis the element of art: Line, I had them use different liens and different positions of their hands on the paper to produce fun leaf shapes all over the paper.

Break the steps down.  A lot of I do, and you do direct draw works best with younger children.  No matter how much it may be directed, the child’s art will not look like the instructor’s art.  Check out the examples posted here by my children and compare it to the teacher’s model. 

Breaking the lesson down

Check out my children’s first leaves using curved lines.  They are great.

Turn the paper.  Close your fingers.  Place your hand on the paper and watch and listen. Emphasize using a bumpy line around the hand.  A bumpy line is drawn with curved lines.  The curve lines touch and follow the leader.

Repeat the first few directions. Then a bumpy line again, BUT this time place the pointy edges out. 

How to challenge the kids to engage them more in the springtime art making

Turn the paper, close your fingers, and place your hand on the paper.  Children are challenged to overlap leaf shapes.  Tell them to air draw above a previously drawn leaf or try to draw behind previous leaves.  However, smaller hands have no problem squeezing more in.  My daughter calls them baby leaves. Lastly use wavy and zig-zag lines for the last leaves.

Engage the kids during the springtime natural art process with paint

Next fill the leaves with a range of green values.  Students used markers and water.  More water makes lighter values. Less water in the marker makes darker values. As a result, see the examples below that show this well. 

Washable markers work for this application.  Our markers are not washable. I failed to double-check this fact. So we got the paints out. Therefore, the green scheme was lost. Oh well! Pink is a great color for a leaf.  Brown is not really a fresh leaf for a caterpillar. They enjoyed painting the leaves whatever colors made them happy. 

Lastly, we used black for the shadows, space around the leaves, and for painting the veins in the leaves. I had to emphasize how to hold the brush for the thin lines inside the leaves. They did well with it.  The children were able to use less water to make the darker value of black. 

My children enjoy color.  Often, they change what colors are their favorite.  What are your children’s favorite colors?  Why do they like those colors?

Time to creep Mommy out:

Now we added the caterpillars.  We painted the glue onto the paper.  I demonstrated wavy lines or letter S movements, but my children struggled with the notion as well as some students at school.  Sheets of colored tissue, craft, or gift paper are used.  It was torn or cut into small pieces.  The children crumbled the paper and pressed it into the glue to develop a raised relief textured caterpillar.  My son made a “fat caterpillar”. We added google eyes.  I then expressed how I find bugs with lots of legs creepy. They giggled and paint lots of creepy straight black lines along the length of the caterpillars. 

Five Hooks:

If you would like to engage the kids further with the springtime natural art making process here are additional ideas to either start with or end with:

• Eric Carle’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar

• YouTube video with a read-aloud or animation of the above book

• Books with caterpillar facts

• Science-oriented videos about caterpillars

• Plants, plucked leaves, nature walk, and or images of leaves

Here is a link to an alternative art lesson that includes a caterpillar them as well: The Very Patterned Caterpillar in 40 Minutes