Exploring Seasonal Changes With Children
Art and Nature Activities in Preschool, Primary and Middle School
Developing a connection to nature, while observing seasonal changes, doesn’t have to involve buses and field trips to forests. Select a tree in the backyard or schoolyard and return to it throughout the year. An assortment of art activities creates different ways to experience the tree.
Do these activities with preschool and kindergarten children as they learn about seasonal changes. Primary school students will connect to the outdoor experiences. Older children will focus on interpreting their experiences through art.
Exploring Seasonal Changes with Children
Select a tree with a diameter of at least twelve inches. A child (or an adult) should be able to give the tree a hug without grabbing her own elbows.
Choose a tree that will experience changes – spring buds, summer leaves, autumn colors, winter bareness. For parents and teachers living in places without dramatic seasonal variation, focus on changes in the weather or seasonal lighting.
The focus should be on the nature outside the children’s door – what they are experiencing with their senses, not what they can read in a book.
Creating a Seasonal Scrapbook
Create a simple scrapbook by setting the different projects into plastic sheet protectors that fit into a three-ring binder. Include sleeves that hold photographs.
Be sure to date each piece, including the year.
Select the projects that work best for the age of the children.
Summer Tree Art
Collect leaves from the tree and do leaf prints. Brush poster or acrylic paints on the veined side of the leaf. Gently turn over and set on a clean sheet of paper. Set a piece of scrap paper over the leaf and rub. Lift up the scrap paper and the leaf to reveal the leaf print.
Create leaf silhouettes by holding a leaf against a piece of paper and painting over the edge of the leaf and onto the paper. Remove the leaf to show the shape.
Cut around the shape of several leaf prints and paste into a collage. Take a picture of the tree, paste onto paper and then set the trimmed leaf prints around the photograph as a frame.
Autumn Tree Art
Collect favorite leaves and press them between sheets of clear contact paper.
Cut a tree silhouette shape from a sheet of construction paper. Glue different leaves behind the page, so the colors come through the opening in the paper. Seal the page in contact paper.
Try different texture activities that create tactile experiences with trees.
Winter Tree Art
Outside, observing the tree, draw a silhouette of the tree using white or gray crayon on blue, purple, or gray construction paper. Inside, paint the sky and ground with watercolor paints. The crayon will repel the paint.
Do a bark rubbing by peeling the paper wrapping off a crayon and laying the crayon lengthwise over paper placed over the bark. Rub the crayon over the bark. Cover the entire the entire page and paste a photograph of the tree in the center of the bark rubbing “frame.”
Spring Tree Art
Before the leaves open, collect a twig and force the buds to open indoors.
Write a haiku about spring and trees. In this three-line poem, the first line contains five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the third line five syllables. Ask younger children to free associate words connected to spring and break them into a haiku.
Have children create artistic representations of the same tree throughout the year. Young children will become more aware of the seasons. Older children will connect to their feelings about experiencing nature while working on the projects.
Spring Activity
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