Spring Flowers Shadow Art

Flowers are blooming everywhere! At one of our centers we have an amazing wisteria plant that inspired this invitation. Essentially you can do this with any plant or flower, but we thought it would be fun to do it with something that is within their surrounding environment everyday.

To set this invitation we foraged some of the wisteria and tied it to easels in order to have it float over the butcher paper to create shadows. We also placed some in vases to be at their level. We provided an array of different shades purples, whites, and greens, Colorations Tempera Paint that was similar to the wisteria. Next we invited the children to trace the outline of the wisteria followed by letting them paint their tracings.

The beauty of exploring light, shadow, & color is that the children engage in this process in a myriad of creative ways. From infancy these three components always fascinate any child & it carries throughout their childhood. They are always enamored with the wondrous world of light, shadow, & color as it is something that they are naturally drawn to. It always provides limitless opportunities, & ignites their curiosity/creativity. Through exploring with light, shadow, & color children are exploring & engaging in a whole range of theories, textures, & materials.

The beauty of process art is that anything & everything can inspire art, such as the wisteria. Painting in any form provides children with an avenue to express their feelings in a visual way, which further helps their social emotional development. The more a child is exposed to different types of art it leads to seeing the world in different ways, becoming more observant, feeling creative & appreciating the different forms of art.