Throughout the summer, the children explored various herbs that we grew in our garden and that grow around us. We made pesto with our basil, added mint to a watermelon lemonade and we explored other herbs from my garden, like sage, thyme, lavender and lemon verbena with play dough.
In September the children experienced exploring some fresh lavender cut from my apartment’s front garden. This lavender was saved and dried for future creative use. As an educator and artist, I value bringing in nature to the creative experiences I provide for the children. These things all came together to inspire me to make recycled paper this fall with the children.
On October 2nd, I brought my small blender, some ripped up white paper that some of the previous class had helped rip up for an earlier project, and the dried lavender. As I set up at the art table children began to gather. On the table I added two buckets and a watering can filled with water. Finley and Theo each took turns helping me fill the blender’s cup with a mixture of the paper pieces and water. Fox and Birdie each had a turn pressing the blender down to make the paper pulp. Colin B didn’t like the sound of the blender but stayed near to see what was happening, showing his interest and courage. As we worked together, showing team work, communication and social skills, both of the buckets got filled with a paper pulp.
“What are we making?” Asked Theo, as he reached to touch the pulp after he had seen me reach my hands in and mix it around. When I told him that we were going to make some art with paper and flower petals, he turned his head on an angle and smiled, as if to question me. Theo and Nina then helped by mixing the lavender into the pulp. “It feels so soft,” Theo said, with surprise in his voice. Nina hesitated at first but showed courage, after seeing her friend Theo put his hands into the pulp she did too and smiled. “It smells like lavender,” Colin B said, closer to the table now that the blending was done.
With two buckets now filled with a mixture of paper pulp and lavender, each child had the opportunity of exploring the mixture along with a framed screen and a cloth. With my guidance and a few instructions, the screen was placed into the pulp, the pulp was scooped on top of the screen, and then the screen was removed and placed on a towel. The children then pressed the water out of the pulp with their fingers and a cloth, exploring the texture of the pulp as it had the water absorbed out of it.
As the children worked one at a time, individually with me to make their paper pulp art, the second bucket of pulp was explored by the children watching and waiting for their turn. Rose explored with her hands, placing her arms up to her elbow in the mixture. She lifted some stems of lavender, covered in white pulp, all in one fist full into the air and up to her face to smell it.
Through this sensory creative experience, the children got to create a piece of art, step by step, from beginning to end. Exploring nature in the form of lavender, they used all of their senses, their uniqueness and their creativity.
