Sunflowers in Bloom

One of the subjects we do for school is a Nature Study, where we pick one area of interest each week and we learn a little about it and we record our finding into what we call our "nature journal". Usually I try to pick something the kids are interested in for that week. But this week I decided to choose sunflowers simply because we have a few growing in our backyard.

Lately though I have been getting some resistance from the kids in doing nature studies. It has been a little frustrating for me since I really enjoy this subject. I'm still having to evaluate why they are not enjoying this as much as they used to. I am praying about this so the Lord can show me what I need to do to make this experience more enjoyable for everyone. One reason, I think, is I have been hesitant to allowing them to paint. Simply out of my own selfishness. I hate to clean up the mess! But I realize it is not fair to them and does not benefit them to not paint. They love it and I need to be more accommodating.

So, we did our nature study on sunflowers today. At first we were only going to just draw them with coloring pencils in our nature journals but I decided to break out the paints instead. The kids had a blast! And they went from saying "No! We don't want to do nature studies!" to "Yippee! We get to paint! This is going to be fun!"

For inspiration, we looked at our new art appreciation print by Vincent Van Gogh called The Vase With Sunflowers. Brianna is trying to draw her version of it.

Rebekah is using a real sunflower from our backyard to help her draw her painting. She's really good!

After several attempts at it, I helped encourage Zach to not just scribble all over his paper. I talked him through how a sunflower looks and this is his own painting after our little talk. An artist in the making!

Brianna's finished piece. She even made sure her sunflower had roots drawn in. She worked hard on this one.

Rebekah's completed project. Oh! And Zach snuck in this picture just as I snapped it. This is his favorite thing to do...make faces at the camera. He's my little clown. LOL