Please provide appropriate supervision to the children in your care when completing all activities. You will need to decide what types of activities are safe for the children in your care. Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when providing art and sensory experiences for children.
Age Group:
Preschool
Objectives:
Children will experience a process-focused nature art activity
Land Art
CDA Competency Standard: II.5.1a Activities encourage curiosity, exploration and discovery a) Activities involve developmentally appropriate, hands-on experiences
Materials:
Camera
Whatever nature provides
Land art book (We recommend Land Art for Kids by Richard Schilling and Julia Brooklyn)
Procedure:
Show children a land art video or book to get them familiar with the concept.
Take your group on a field trip somewhere with natural elements such as trees, bushes, grass, rocks, sand, etc. Even the playground can be an option in a pinch. Encourage children to first observe their surroundings. Point out shapes, colors, patterns, light, reflection and more. Children should begin collecting materials they find interesting and creating land art with them.
Take photos of children’s land art and discuss the pieces with the artists. What inspired them? How did they create the piece? What previous knowledge did they build on to make their art?
Assessment:
Observe and record the child’s experience with creating land art and explaining the process that they chose. Document the experience with the photos of their art work.
Extension:
Combine this land art activity with concepts such as patterns, colors, shapes, or counting.
Click on the photos to enlarge
For Future Reference
When this training is over, it's going to be hard to remember all these lesson plans! We want you to get the most from this training, and continue to use this information in your classroom. We have put the lesson plans in this course, that are produced by Successful Solutions, on our resource website, www.Lessons4Learners.com, where you can continue to access them after your training expires. Be sure to bookmark the direct link to the page where the lesson plans can be found for easy access in the future at: http://www.lessons4learners.com/nature.html