Painting: Apple Tree

Today we painted! Jake loves paint but loves using the paintbrush more than finger painting. I had Jake make an apple tree using his hand, arm and thumb. We started by painting his hand and arm brown to represent the tree trunk.

Next, I showed him how to stipple the paint brush to make leaves on the tree. This did not come naturally to him but he picked it up!

I blew on the picture and tried to let it dry a few minutes while getting the next step ready. We used thumb prints to make apples in the tree. I showed him what to do and he quickly took over. It was interesting to me  to find that Jake did not know what his thumb was when I told him to make a thumb print. Some times we get caught up in everything they do know that it slips our mind on what we need to work towards! I sing the Thumbkin song all the time and thought he knew but I guess we will work on our body parts some more!

Here is our finished apple tree! Pretty cute, huh? He wanted to add apples falling out of the tree as well. A very sweet addition. I wrote Apple Tree on the top of the picture and we hung it on the refrigerator. This way we will see it all day long and can talk about apples, trees and farming.