Fall is really the best season for creating themed Montessori-inspired works and crafts.  There is such a variety of materials, and they each provide a different sensorial element.

We’ve been experimenting lately with painting using objects other than paintbrushes, so I decided to bring our fall theme into play to see what we could make.  One naptime, I went out to the backyard and collected different fall nature objects to use for painting.  If I were a better/less-controlling person and my kids were slightly older, I could have let them help me — but I’m not and I really wanted to make sure we had a good variety of textures.

I taped a long sheet of paper from a craft paper roll to our kitchen island so we would have plenty of space.  I put a bit of paint on some paper plates and spaced them out along the paper.  I set out a few nature objects beside each color — the objects we used included pinecones, acorn caps, tree branches, leaves, and a dried sunflower head (found at our local farmer’s market).

This was by far the most successful painting project we’ve ever done!  Both girls were engaged and happily working for about half an hour.  L would have continued much longer than that, but the paper was completely full!  Her favorite nature object to use was the acorn caps, which made circles all over the paper.

N wasn’t quite sure how to paint with the leaves, but she enjoyed painting with the pinecone by banging it on the paper.  Eventually she ended up just painting with her hands.

When the girls finished, we had a large banner-sized fall painting!  I love how this turned out, and it was a great sensorial experience for both ages.  L wants to hang it up in her room, so she will be able to enjoy it all fall.