Painting with Nature Items for Preschoolers is a lot of fun as you start out with a nature walk together.  Painting with Natural Materials is a lot of fun and considered process art.  There are so many benefits of painting with nature that makes it fun and easy art for preschoolers.  

Painting with Nature Items

Consider taking a nature walk with your toddlers or preschoolers on a pretty afternoon.  Encourage them to pick up nature and place it in a brown paper bag.  Talk about what you see, God’s creation, consider some science for preschoolers that you can discuss i.e. leaves changing colors or flowers blooming.  Keep it basic and simple but use this time to talk about nature and the things they see.

As they are picking up nature let them discover and pick up whatever they’d like – within reason of course – no living/ harmful insects or animals!!!  You’ll be surprised at what they notice and want to place in their bags…it’s quite fun to see their creativity while exploring.

Some items we found:

• rocks
• pine needle
• pine needle group
• leaves
• pine cones
• acorns
• sweet gum tree drops
• sticks
• flowers
• grass

tree bark  (use a clothes pin to make these small items become a paint brush!) 

Let them be preschoolers and explore!  They learn so much through exploration hence I really love the idea of STEAM education.  I love it so much I’ve written an entire article on Everything You Need to Know about STEAM! 

Remember STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math, we always strive to use at least two of these ares in an activity but the more the merrier.  So through this activity we learned through: SCIENCE, ART and MATH.

Painting with Nature

We did an entire activity painting with nature but only using leaves and this was a lot of fun!  I love our little “hack” on our “paint brush” for toddlers!  See more HERE.  + grab a FREE Nature Painting Printable to create a nature book keepsake.

What you need for Painting with Nature items:

• • Acrylic Paints
  • Smock (or old paint clothes)
  • Clothes pins
  • Blank Paper
  • Brown Bag to gather nature items
  • Nature Items from your nature walk
  • Paper plate (Kids Craft Room also suggests a muffin tin to put paints in, pretty genius idea!)

VARIATION: See our Ultimate Guide to Rock Painting and that was a blast for us as well!  

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We are a husband and wife team, pairing our strengths together to teach our preschooler in the most fun and engaging way we possibly can.  The mister is a high school educator at Northlake Christian school in Covington Louisiana and over the Innovation Center, which is all things STEAM.  I am a SAHM that blogs pretty much everything we do in our little paradise, from what we eat, to where we travel to how we teach our little one.  We hope you are inspired to incorporate STEAM into learning with your children.  Follow us: WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST