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, it was a great Book and Activity.
(This post contains affiliate links, Indian Paintbrush image used under Creative Commons license)
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!
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