Painting with Natural Loose Parts

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Maria Montessori believed that “beauty could be found in nature and that nature itself should be and is the most infinite source of creative inspiration” source.
Connecting art experience with nature allows us to incorporate more meaning into our nature walks. When going outside we learn to notice colors and identify sounds and smells.

This time-out nature walk had the purpose of collecting natural objects for our next art exploration. We looked for something that was not too small or too big, had different textures, and was easy to roll. (A knows from working with geometric solids that some shapes we can roll and some we can’t).

I aim to make all our art experiences open-ended and make the main accent on the process. I am also inclined to introduce a different skill to master every time. After the initial demonstration, I usually make sure she has access to materials at any time, in case she would like to revisit and work on the same art project again.

For painting with natural loose parts we used:

– wooden tray
– a paper that is hard enough for rolling rocks and other solid parts
– finger paint
– natural loose parts we collected

After collecting a few things from the local park that were easy enough to roll on the tray I laid them for A to dip into finger paint one at a time.

The messier the more there is excitement and satisfaction for my darling. She first rolled them one at a time, then threw all the objects on the tray and rolled them all at once.

We had lots of fun and looking forward to the next adventure.

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  About Anastasia. Anastasia is a former Early Childhood Teacher and the founder of Montessori Nature, a blog about Montessori - inspired and Nature-based explorations. She taught in a Montessori setting for 10 years and has been practicing the Montessori way of learning and living for the last 20 years. She loves designing engaging educational printables for children. Browse Anastasia's educational resources on Teachers Pay Teachers.


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