Flight of the Hummingbirds

So, sometimes my girls and I like to use pieces of nature in our art projects, in the past we’ve painted leaves or seeds or something like this, a tiny piece of the flower casing that drops to the ground after pollination. Yesterday, we set out to the neighborhood park in search of something we had painted before, this pod-shaped casing the girls say looks like a bat stingray, pictured below.

While at the park, we didn’t see any “stingrays”, but we did spy these curious flower pods. At first, the girls decided they looked like “butterfly or fairy wings” and planned to draw pictures of fairies, paint the wings and then glue them to their scenes. Once at home though, they turned the “wings” around and instantly shouted together, “They’re hummingbirds!” and got to painting them with a variety of acrylic paints I set out for them.

Once the birds were painted, they got to work on their landscapes. I used thick construction paper for this and let them paint several layers of acrylic on it, intended to make a nice, robust surface upon which to glue their birds later. See their handiwork below.

 
 Lastly, we had fun using our “extra” birds to make a landscape the three of us together, even making some indoor planter decorations by putting some of our birds on wooden sticks! All in all, we had a fun hour or so painting in the backyard together! – April