I didn’t move to Texas until I was in 5th grade, so I missed out on several activities young Texans do as they grow up here. In high school, I interned in a kindergarten classroom and watched as they taught their Texas history unit, and taught about the symbols of Texas. Of course, they started with the Legend of the Bluebonnet, but after reading all about the bluebonnet, we moved on to the Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. That’s when I was introduced to the classic Legend of the Indian Paintbrush art lesson. Now over a decade later I’ve done the very same Legend of the Indian Paintbrush art lesson with my kids.
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The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola is a cute book about a Native American who grows up marching to the beat of a different drummer. He doesn’t want to be a warrior, but loves pictures and doing other things. He has a spirit journey that tells him how he will someday paint a beautiful sunset, and he searches for ages and eventually paints using Indian Paintbrushes (a type of local flower here).
So, that’s the story. Now, can you guess what we did?
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush art lesson
Yep, we painted sunsets with flowers. And, let me tell you it is not easy to paint with a flower. The stems keep breaking and you can’t get any detail work done. Now, I guess Indian Paintbrushes might work a little better because they are from the lupus family and are shaped rather like….. paintbrushes, you know the ones for fine details.
Our Legend of the Indian Paintbrush art supplies
We stopped by the grocery store and bought a bunch of daisies and chrysanthemums and such. The Indian Paintbrush like flowers was only in the super expensive arrangements, and to be honest they’re really more of a wildflower….
Once you have that grab your poster paints, art paper (I love huge paper for preschoolers), and a large surface you don’t mind getting paint on.
And all too quickly my kids got tired of painting a sunset and just decided to make brown blobs. They had very detailed descriptions of their pictures, which of course I no longer remember…..
This would be right before I decided to take her shirt off. Her new thing is to put handprints on everything. EVERY THING!
And then Batman…… That picture above is an early stage……
And then about halfway through Princess started singing. I tried to get a video of her singing, but then she stopped and the boys started yelling about painting their hair. So I made an executive decision it was time for a bath!
More fun book and activity ideas
Art time is fun time in your house. Those pictures of Batman are great, and the brown blobs are well known in this house as well. Interesting book though – we have to read more Tommy DePaola.
Maybe you should have used the flowers for painting on some war paint. 🙂
I love that story! I used to read it to my class every year! What a fun idea to paint with a flower! I'm going to try that one of these days…
Cute, I love the pic with the paint on his face!
Your posts always make me laugh!
I found painting with feathers to be difficult too! My kids got frustrated early with that one.
It looks like they had a great time painting. All of our painting projects end up as brown smears too. They like to mix colors.
I guess I am not that brave yet with the paint! Your kids always crack me up. Looks like they all had fun!
What a fun idea to paint with flowers- I'll bet the kids loved it!
Too funny, my daughter has to make hand prints every time we get out paint!
Watch out Ticia- Batman looks more like “The Ladies Man” in that last pic!
Looks like a whole lot of fun was had by all! And the book sounds really interesting.
What a great StArt activity!
Love that picture of your son with the flower in his mouth =)
Looks like you guys had a lot of fun. I can see why you evoked your rights to have bath time. 🙂
great stART project 🙂
We just got this book in the mail the other day, so we may have to copy your project one of these days!