The natural world provides so many creative learning opportunities for children. From colours and textures to patterns and shapes, there are lots of different things for children to experience in an ever changing 'outdoor classroom' that alters with the seasons.
Outdoor art provides many opportunities to embed the key skills in the Early Years Foundation Stage. These include developing concentration, hand-eye coordination, gross and fine motor skills, language development and so much more. Taking time to notice the beauty in the natural world and allowing the children to get creative is also a great way to enhance wellbeing.
Now, let's dive into some of my absolute favourite ways to bring art outdoors in an early years setting.
Transient art
Transient art has limitless possibilities and children will learn as they do. Be creative with natural or recycled materials and explore different ways to combine loose parts. Children will practice independence by selecting which materials to combine (possibly by colour/texture) and where to place them. Pictures and patterns can be made, but the process rather than the product is key to this non permanent loose part play.
What you’ll need:
Yellow Door Natural Sorting Stones
Cosy Large Wooden Oval Discs
Fabric Offcuts
Flat Pebbles
Found/fallen natural objects
Shadow art
Shadow silhouettes are an artistic way to capture the outline of an object on a sunny day. The area of light blocked by an object creates a natural template to inspire creativity and encourage children to practice drawing and mark making. Drawing around the outline provides opportunities to talk about shapes and patterns. Match the object back onto the shadow drawing. As described in the next activity, the shapes captured can also inspire printing.
What you’ll need:
YPO Colouring Pencils
A3 Sugar Paper
Printing
A simple but super effective activity. Draw a lovely picture and pattern onto a Safeprint tile and paint over the tile with your chosen colour or colours of paint. Then, place a clean piece of paper over the tile and press down—pull back the paper to reveal the image. Experiment with different paint combinations, or dip a small piece of tile attached to a block into paint and use it as a stamp. To combine this activity with the shadow art activity, trace the image made from shadow art onto the Safeprint tile and follow the process above to create a print.
What you'll need:
YPO Ready Mixed Paint
Safeprint
Clay creations
Air drying clay is perfect for little hands to create masterpieces with. Roll a ball of clay and press it down with a flat sided object until the clay is around 1cm thick. Then, gather found and fallen natural materials and ask the children to use these materials to push into the clay to create their own art pieces. These can be left in the clay to dry and observe the changes over time or removed to make imprints. Brushing over the dried clay with PVA glue will ensure they are waterproof and less likely to break.
What you'll need:
Air Drying Modelling Clay
Natural Tea Branches
Dried Coloured Leaves
YPO PVA Glue
Found/fallen natural objects
Natural frames
Join together four sticks of similar length by wrapping raffia in each corner and covering the ends with tape for safety. Once secure, loosely weave raffia around each stick and tie the end around a stick with a knot. Decorate your frame by threading natural found materials around it. Use your frame as a viewfinder to explore what you can see, or lie down on the ground and position other natural materials within the frame to create patterns and pictures. Discuss which found materials match the coloured objects within the frame to promote further opportunities for language development. Group objects under 'the same' or 'not the same' categories.
What you'll need:
Natural Raffia
Raffia Coloured Sticks
Found/fallen natural objects
Textile art
Weaving using a range of materials, including fabric scraps, raffia, and ribbons, is a great way to begin textile art. Combining natural materials by threading, twisting, and placing them within the weave encourages decision making and develops fine motor skills. Take a piece of recycled cardboard and cut slots down each long side. Wrap different coloured pieces of ribbon around the cardboard and secure them at the back of the board with tape. Children can use these to collect and weave fallen natural materials or to find and place objects under matching coloured ribbons.
What you'll need:
Assorted Ribbon
Found/fallen natural objects
This article has been taken from our latest early years magazine, Little Learners. For more inspirational early years content like this, you can subscribe to receive our magazine for FREE or find out more on our Little Learners homepage.
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