Animals of St. Lucia Art Project

 

A few months ago we (my dad and Preston) built a new deck off the back of our house and when the mess was being cleaned up I saved a few wooden blocks out for a future project. Though I had no idea of what the project might be, they were nice enough pieces of wood that I felt they'd be used. 

When my littles and I were trying to decide what kind of project we might do that featured animals of St. Lucia, I was thrilled to remember that we had these blocks of wood and since my littles love to paint, it seemed like a great idea to paint these blocks of wood. 

We gathered up our supplies and each of us selected an animal that we wanted to paint.

Eliana was conflicted about whether to paint a sea turtle or a lizard, but she settled on a lizard. 

Aiden has had a fascination with snakes for a while now, so I wasn't surprised that he chose to paint a St. Lucia racer. The St. Lucia racer is a snake that was considered extinct until the 1970s when someone discovered one. It has been called the rarest snake in the world and it is believed that there are only 18 of them in existence (though some reports say as many as 100) and all of them are on the island of St. Lucia. The St. Lucia racer is no where near as dangerous as the snakes that Aiden is obsessed with these days (ie: King Cobra), as it is a gentle snake, but it's a snake none the less and Aiden wanted to paint it. 

Aiden is using the hair dryer to speed up the drying process (he takes after with me his lack of patience).

Clearly he's pretty hard core about his art. Paint on the face is nothing to bat an eyelash at.  

 When we were done, we had some colorful paintings and a minor mess to clean up. 

Eliana with her lizard. See it? It's the blue part on the right. The spot of green on the left corner is a banana cluster, which is the biggest export of St. Lucia and considered to be "Green Gold". 

Aiden with his St. Lucia racer. 

My St. Lucia Parrot with some green bananas as well. (I know, it may be time for me to head back to art school for a crash course or two).

Have you done any painting projects with your littles lately? How about used some scrap of wood (or other material) that was left over from a project?