paint cut paste

we are so excited to be participating in mommy lab‘s forest fiesta, along with 22 other fabulous bloggers, in celebration of world environment day! with the theme being forests this year, it seemed like a wonderful time to explore the magical woods around us in northern california — the redwoods!

our family took a little drive up to visit muir woods national state park. we told N that we were going to a place where she could hunt for fairies, so she brought along her magnifying glass… of course, when we got there, yetis seemed to dominate her mythical creature search, true to form for our daughter.

we even spent time playing our native american flutes in the forest together while in muir woods… it is such a beautiful experience to play the flute for the trees, and in that sort of earth space. forest fiesta, indeed!

to think about the interconnectedness of the redwood root mass beneath our feet while walking through the forest inspires a sense of awe and reverence for mother nature. to sit upon a redwood’s tree seat and feel your own rootedness, groundedness, and sense of belonging to the earth is a gift. i couldn’t help but think of starhawk’s teachings while we were in the forest, and vowed (again, to myself) to read the spiral dance, as its been sitting on my bookshelf forever.

N was inspired to create her own forest. since we had recently purchased some plaster of paris, i decided that it might serve as a nice forest floor for her project. we mixed up a batch, tinted it with a bit of green acrylic paint (per N’s request) and poured it into a cream carton.

after gathering all sorts of twigs, sticks, and stalks of lavender in the yard, N stuck them down into the plaster of paris.

she sprinkled some small pebbles she found at a local beach on top. we let this sit to harden for about a day and a half, and then N ripped the carton off of the plaster…

to reveal a lovely forest model!

N immediately introduced it to her toy animals, so they could rightfully inhabit the forest.

how many animals can you spy?

we hot glued some felt to the bottom of the forest model so the plaster wouldn’t damage our furniture when N brought it inside to play, and also to use it as a paperweight when the animals finish frolicking about the forest.

happy world environment day to all… and in the spirit of forests (and the wisdom of starhawk) — let’s seedbomb the earth!

i just love when art activities evolve organically, and from a child-centered place. we’ve been spending a lot of time in the yard lately, and N is a bigtime twig gatherer. and lemme tell ya, we have some amazingly flexible, shiny, cool twigs in these parts.

wish i knew what types of trees these were.

the giving tree

yesterday N was collecting all sorts of sweet sticks… today, when i suggested putting them into a pretty vase, she said, “noooo, i want to make a vase out of them!” um, okay. improvise, momma! so i grabbed an empty honey jar and a couple rubber bands, and we went to work, covering the outside of the jar with the twigs, securing them with rubber bands at the top and bottom.

N helped with this for a long time, and i had to finish it up. it’s somewhat tedious for little hands. she took lots of breaks to gather more twigs.

keepin' on keepin' on

eventually the whole jar was covered with twigs that extended from its base to about an inch above its top lip, secured by two rubber bands. (i had to trim some of the longer twigs with scissors.)

i slid the rubber bands into the center, and covered them with raffia, (realizing that the blue rubber bands weren’t gonna get fully hidden, so i switched them out with tan ones, so be sure to start with tan if you do this.) N picked some flowers from our yard for the vase, and our creation was complete and functional!

i’m not entirely loving the raffia, and may change it to a groovy rustic ribbon. (mostly because my cat chews in raffia and will flip this vase over in two seconds flat if it’s in her range.)

it did make for a wonderfully earthy dinner centerpiece tonight.

while i’m not necessarily posting daily photos of us outdoors for the entirety of this blog in april, most of our projects lately and this month will involve mother earth, so….

thank you, 5 orange potatoes, for getting the kids outside!