Saturday, July 2, 2011

Painting with Blueberries

Early American colonists made grey paint by boiling blueberries in milk. - Blueberry Facts

Barren River Lake State Resort Park in Kentucky

All week the State park has had activities for the Children every 2 hours. So, we did several of them which were being hosted by the volunteer college-age rangers that come to work for the summer.

This activity showed how a person could use flowers, berries and leaves to get color from natural ingredients.
This first part of this particular activity was collecting berries and leaves while on a hike.

The second part was to crush them up so they can have a hand-on lesson in how the natives and early Americans used berries and leaves for dye to paint their belongings.


Beloved is helping with the crushing up of the blackberries and the blackberries that were not ripe so we could have purple and red dye.


All the Little Miss wanted to do was eat the blackberries!

But, once every thing was mashed the painting began...

7 comments:

  1. How fun. What a special time of learning and creating.

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  2. I think I would rather eat the blueberriers too!

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  3. I think I agree with Little Miss. Lets eat them all. It looks like a lot of fun and a great learning experience. Enjoy your day and God bless.

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  4. What a great idea! We will be doing colonial America this fall so I will have to do this. Thanks!

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  5. We enjoy doing this too! And who wouldn't want to eat the goodies as you go along....lol

    Blessings,
    Jill

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  6. I'm with Little Miss - I love eating blackberries!

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  7. What a great idea and activity for the park to do with children. Thanks for sharing on the Fieldtrip hop:) your little one looks so cute eating her blue berries:)

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