Wash away winter ... Blow in some spring!

Today we read another Lio Lionni book. It was titled "A Busy Year" and it was about two little mice who befriend a tree and visit her month after month as the seasons change.  The children made many connections to other stories as well as personal connections as we read....one of the very "interesting" things they noticed was on the March page in the story it was raining and there was ....NO SNOW!!   Wouldn't that be nice???? After we read we decided to bring some spring into the school and cheer things up a big so we created spring trees with buds and blossoms just like in the story, but instead of using collage like Lio Lionni (we have already explored that medium) we used a water wash technique. First we washed on blue, yellow and purple to create a background and then we used a blow painting technique to create bare tree branches. Finally we used q-tips to dot on buds and blossoms.  The results are breathtaking.... Enjoy a taste of spring!'