- I recommend doing this project on pale, blue card as it means you already have a sky in place.
- You may want to show the children pictures by Pissarro or Seurat and mention pointillism/divisionism. See, "links" for a Seurat painting, puzzle and worksheet. Really it should be just yellow and blue dots next to each other, to give the impression of green, for pointillism, but never mind! (If you are feeling keen, and want the lesson to be about pointillism you could do the whole picture in dots).
- Get the children to paint a trunk of a tree using brown, you may want to do this in groups to let the brown paint dry slightly, or do the trunk during the previous art lesson. This prevents the leaves all turning brown).
- Tell the children they are going to do "dotty"leaves, and to start by putting yellow on.
- Let the children put a tiny bit of blue paint with the yellow and then put more leaves on in that shade.
- Keep going until they are virtually using blue.
- Let the children choose a shade of green to paint some grass as they go along.
You can also use this with red and yellow, to do autumn pictures, or wait until the leaves have dried to put pink blossom on for a Spring picture.
As before, many young children will just paint the paper, brown or green, but don't worry they will have hopefully enjoyed the experience. Also, don't worry what shape the trunks are, trees come in all shapes and sizes.
If all the children's faces haven't been covered in blue and green dots by the end of the lesson, you have done well!!
