Stones
Land art and family portraits
Art doesn't have to take place inside.
On a walk or in the garden, see if you can make a picture or pattern using stones.
Lay a trail to follow by placing stones to make arrow shapes.
Use stones to make a portrait of your own family. Talk about who is in your family and use size adjectives. For example who is the largest? Who is the smallest?
You could draw a shape and get your child to fill the outline by placing as many stones as possible.
Decorations and pets
Children often enjoy painting things other than a flat, smooth piece of paper.
Gather some stones and have fun painting them to be used as decorations for the garden, plant pots or leave them somewhere for other people to find.
You could drip paint and watch it run and mix or paint a pattern.
Paint a stone pet to play with and look after. It could be a bee or even a stone monster. Add eyes or other craft supplies. Talk about the stone pet. For example what is your pet called? Where will it live, sleep and eat?
Stone cairns
Stone cairns are manmade stacks of stones that can often be found on top of mountains as landmarks.
Make your own stone cairn at home to mark walks you've been on.
Each time you go on a walk search for a stone to add to your pile.
Ask your child to think about what kind of stone they are searching for. Talk about what will balance well, if it needs to be smooth or bumpy, flat or round, wide or small.
Funny faces
Create funny faces and talk about feelings.
Save some magazines and newspapers from the recycling pile. Ask your child to help you find pictures of eyes, noses and mouths and cut them out individually. Glue them to some stones. You could always draw faces onto the stones if you prefer.
Draw a head shape on some card or paper and have some fun making some funny faces. While you are doing this, talk about how you think the ‘people’ are feeling. Are they happy, sad, angry, serious?
You could make hair out of playdough for your characters.