This morning’s session was all about exploring the rainbow of colours that we can get from plants and vegetables and different techniques to extract the colour to create marks on paper. We started the session by reading the story ‘The Hidden Rainbow’ by Christie Matheson which introduces children to the importance of bees, and how they enable a rainbow of coloured plants, flowers, and fruit to grow.

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The Mini Nature Artists were then introduced to a variety of vegetables, fruits and plants set up on a table in the beautiful sunshine where we discussed what each item was and had chance to explore their textures and how they smelt. We had a selection of flowers, lemon balm, beetroot and beetroot stalks, raspberries, and blueberries. I introduced the different techniques we were going to use which included rubbing the plant material on the paper to release colour, printing with the different parts of a beetroot and hammering berries to create some wonderful explosions of colour.

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The children were especially excited and keen to get hammering, placing the berries on their paper and watching the explosions of colour appear as the hammer came down on them. Little faces lit up at the discovery and sparked laughter and enthusiasm to explore what else they could create. Some Mini Nature Artists decided to try and splat their berries with their hands, whilst others placed petals and leaves on their paper to see if they had the same results.

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The Mini Nature Artists fully immersed themselves in the experience, exploring the materials in different ways and working collaboratively with the tools and supporting each other with ideas and discoveries.

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Towards the end of the session, I introduced natural paints made with vegetables allowing the children to create prints with the leaves, flowers and even use the flower stems as paintbrushes. They were fascinated to learn about how these were made and discover the different patterns and marks they could make by using the same type of materials but in a slightly different way.

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Another delightful session with these Mini Nature Artists!

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