Arm, Hand, and Finger Print Trees

Visiting Ethylwolfe's class on a regular basis keeps me motivated for tons of projects I want to try at home.  His teacher, though she has the most "dull" room out of the 3 kindergarten classes at his school, is by far the most creative and always has tons of ideas for keeping their creativity rolling.  In fact, most of the awesome things that I loved around the school while touring last year, turned out to be things that she had done with previous  students.  So, needless to say, I LOVE his teacher :-D  

The downside is, that she doesn't force the kids to get involved in some of the art projects if they don't want to.  Ethylwolfe's favorite thing to do at school is build with the large wooden blocks, so every chance he gets to opt out of something, he takes it and runs for the block area.  Those of you who know me, know that I LOVE art projects, and so to see my son opt out of something, that I feel is essential to his education, is a big heart breaker.  This project is one that he opted out of while I was there.  I even tried to whisper a bribe of candy for when we got in the car, but he wasn't going for it.  

I decided to save the idea for one of our home projects, modified it a bit so I didn't feel like a total copycat, and now here they are.  

KennaKat was able to do it with us as well, which was also a plus!

If you would like to make them yourselves, these are the things that you will need....

Paper (we used light blue and 12x12 card stock), paint (brown, greens), paintbrush

Clean arms with sleeves rolled up past the elbows :)

 

Apply brown paint to hand and arms

Press hand on paper (rocket science)

Send the children to wash their hands and this will allow time for the trunk to air dry a bit before moving onto the leaves portion.

I mixed up several different shades for them to alternate dipping their fingers in.  

Have them press their fingers to make leaves all around the tree.

Once they have tired of this, voila!  You have a tree made by their very own limbs ;-)

KennaKat's...                      Ethylwolfe's...

I added grass at the bottom of the trees.  Ethylwolfe put a swing on his.

The end Results:

The kids had fun making these.  I tried to remain just an "onlooker" and not control where they put what.  I had to encourage them to keep going after they put about 5 leaves on the trees.  But they did not mind continuing on.  The main reason Ethylwolfe did not want to do this at school was because he did not want to feel paint all over his arm, but I "coerced" him into letting me do it.  He liked it once he tried it.  I can see enjoying more projects like this in the future :-)