cardinal in the forest painting

I love art teacher's blogs. Their projects are so darn cute, and now that E is school-aged she's able to do much of it. I found this lovely idea on ARTASTIC! via Pinterest and was thrilled with how it turned out.

 The birch-bark effect was created using a comb and dabs of paint on white cardstock.

She then cut strips out of the paper for the tree trunks and glued them to the construction paper, trimming off the ends. The cardinal is made out of one red circle and the snowflakes from scrap paper hole punches.

A was appalled at the idea of NOT using a paintbrush, but I did convince her to use the comb to create patterns in her painting.

Footprints in the Snow by Michael Dahl

I have to admit this book is nothing particularly special. It's just a simple counting book. BUT it does count by twos, and I think the pictures are adorable. A loved flipping through the pages, and that cardinal is just the perfect little cousin to the one we made. If you run across it in the library, ignore the ho-hum narration and use the sweet pictures for your own learning purposes.