The Jumbo Book of Outdoor Art by Irene Luxbacher (Kids Can Press, ISBN 1-55337-680-3) encourages kids to always keep their eyes open for natural materials that can be used in art projects while also reminding children not to harm or damage their natural environment. This book also teaches children to try new tools and techniques, and serves as an excellent resource for art teachers.
The Jumbo Book of Outdoor Art is divided into four sections: Digging Deep, Going Green, It’s All Elemental, and Fertile Ground.
The first section, Digging Deep, involves projects that use dirt, rocks, metals, and “gems.” The projects include: A Layered Landscape that involves creating the different layers of soil in a jar using everything from soil, pebbles, gravel, Plasticine, gold glitter, and even a plastic dinosaur; Earthenware Extravaganza uses self-hardening clay to create coil pots, pinch pots, and shaped pots; Regal Gems and Jewels shows children how to turn rocks and pebbles into gems and how to make a royal scepter and a regal crown; Precious Metal Masterpiece is a painting project that leaves one stunned with the end result; and Dinosaur Graveyard shows that by using different shaped stones kids can piece together what looks like a dinosaur fossil.
In the second section, Going Green, the projects include: Secret Garden which shows how to make a 3-dimensional composition using materials from outdoors; Silly Sprouts involves growing a sculpture; Beautiful Batik teaches the art of batik using crayon or candle wax and natural dyes; Perfectly Pressed shows how to press leaves and flowers and how to arrange the pressed items into shapes and figures on paper; in Bizarre Botanicals children can use watercolor to create their own bizarre plant; Woven Wonders is about weaving vines, stems, straw, and grass; and in Super Spider’s Web, kids can create a spider web from twigs and raffia.
In It’s All Elemental, children will learn how to make: Wings of a Butterfly using sheets of plastic and paint; a Wonderful Weathervane; a Cool Coral Reef using watercolor; a simple Great Flowing Fountain; and a Sundial-Inspired Assemblage.
Fertile Ground, the final section, is all about natural cycles. It explores artistic projects using roots, a decomposing banana, empty eggshells, driftwood, and more.
The Jumbo Book of Outdoor Art is a fantastic and versatile book that can be used across curriculums: mythical creatures for language arts, prehistoric images for history or social studies, and decomposition for science. The possibilities are endless.
Highly recommended for educators, the home school curriculum, and curious children.
