Camouflage Art

Do you need an easy nature art activity to get your child’s creative juices flowing before the first day of school? My boys loved creating Camouflage Art with paint, dirt, leaves, wood chips, and cattails. Details are below!

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Step 1: Gather Supplies and Set Up the Art Center
While you set up the art center, send your kids on a hunt around the yard for leaves, wood chips, dirt, small pebbles, grasses, and twigs. My boys returned to a newspaper covered table with their hands full of natural embellishments for their Camouflage Art.

Step 2: Paint the Canvas
I showed the boys how to dip a cattail into paint and roll the cattail onto canvas to create a camouflage background. While they painted, we discussed what camouflage was and how animals use camouflage to hide from predators. Colin made a great connection and mentioned that hunters and soldiers also wear camouflage. He called our paintings Army Art.

Step 3: Embellish the Painting
I invited the boys to press leaves, twigs, and wood chips into the paint. They sprinkled grasses and dirt over the wet paint. The natural objects were secured to the canvas as the paint dried.

We were all very pleased with how the paintings came out! We played a little game with them in which one person would hide a painting in the garden, under a tree, or in the grass and the other person would have to find it!

Whether your child is into everything Army, or you are simply studying camouflage in your school science lessons, Camouflage Art is a wonderful, hands-on way to connect the concepts.