I have been enjoying instructing the art portion of our Therapeutic Arts Program at Hochstein.  We have recently started a care for the earth theme with recycle, reduce, and renew concepts.  In this group project I used plastic bottle bottoms and caps, recycled house paint and brushes, and cardboard to create a beautiful flower garden.  Here are the simple steps:

1. Cut off the bottoms of plastic soda and water bottles, save the tops.

2. Use a  white paint primer to coat the bottles and tops.

3. Create flowers using a mixture of old house paint (add acrylic paint to tint), encourage color blending to shade.  We used Q-tips to apply the paint.  Decorate the tops with ladybugs, mushrooms, leaves, bugs, etc.

4. Use old cardboard to create the background.  Use a mix of green and white to create the grassy garden background.  Use an old paintbrush and hold it straight up to dab on the paint to create the texture of grass.

5. When dry (next class), have students one-at-a-time place the flowers/decorated tops on the background.  Encourage cooperation and expressive language skills, “Your turn Mary.”

6. After all the flowers are placed, I used a glue gun to secure the flowers.

7. Musical connection: Find a song about flowers or gardens to share.  You can also create your own song with concepts like- unique, one-of-a-kind, together but different, beauty when we create together, grow and blossom.