Painting with Flowers from the Garden

We have been painting with the flowers from the garden for a fun hands-on bookish play activity with our 5 year old. Let me share with you what we did!*This post contains affiliate links. We only recommend products we use and love. Thank you for your support.I love pairing art projects with children's books, and today we are reading "Chrysanthemum" by Kevin Henkins, which I was lucky to find at our local thrift shop. Going shopping for used books is my guilty pleasure, and I have been missing going shopping for used books with the lockdown we are all in now. What are you missing while staying home to stay safe? Aside from used book shopping, I enjoy being home with the kids, creating art and gardening. I am so excited that spring is on its way, but for now, I will reminisce about last year's summer garden bookish play for you today.We began by going to our garden to collect flowers, and we brought a little ladybug friend along with us, which was very cute. I set the flowers in a little jar, that I wrapped with lace. Then I prepared our learning space wth a tray of paint, a few flowers and the color pallet we were going for was warm colors just like our marigolds. I used the Sunset Colors Acrylic Paint Set from Crayola which worked so perfectly for this! I found this set at our local Walmart.To increase the art lesson, we love to bring in the Mixing Colors Printable from @stephhathawaydesignsLogan was really excited to paint with flowers, and got right into painting a beautiful painting, while I read the book to him.It was really that simple, and a lovely garden schooling time in deed. I cannot wait until our marigolds blossom again this year. In fact, I saved a lot of the seeds from those flowers from last year, so I plan on planting some seedlings this year too. The nice thing about Marigolds is that they are perennials and come back again and again.Marigolds were the closest flower we had in our garden to a Chrysanthemum, and I think it worked well. If you are looking for a fun book to pair your flower painting activity to, this one is a sweet read, all about a little girl who has a long name, and her journey with self acceptance despite what others say about it.Another fun activity to pair with this book is writing your name, building your name, and so on. I have seen some lovely set ups of names and words being spelled with flower petals that I would like to try next!Thanks for reading today,If you are looking for some fun hands on learning packs for garden schooling this spring and summer, check out our latest releasing in our Studio' Shop: