Rock Art

This is what my kids have been doing ALL summer!  We haven't been able to find a whole lot of bugs here in Alaska, but we can find a rock every where we go :)  They never tire of painting rocks either!  Check out these great rocks and an inspiring book also from Red Ted Art:

The Book

The Crow and The Waterhole, by Ambelin Kwaymullina. When travelling, I love picking up “local” books and I chose this book for several reasons -

1) as I was hoping to do an Indigenous inspired craft, I wanted an indigenous inspired book to go with it.

2) the book was published by Freemantle Press – i.e. a local publisher

3) the story and illustrations themselves appealed to me… so:

The story is of a crow, that spies (itself) in the waterhole, but thinks that this beautiful and courage bird is “someone else”. She sets off to try and be a “better bird”, always encountering “other” crows in the local ponds and streams.. until one day the kookaburra points out to her, that it is her all along – she is brave and couragous. She is beautiful. She just needs to look at herself. I love the story, as it tells children to look and see that they too are wonderful eventhough “others always seem to be better”. It also features classic Australian “characters” – the gum tree and the kookaburra!  The illustrations are beautifully vibrant and an in many ways the most beautiful part of the book.

Read more about the author here.

The Craft

As mentioned, I found some little “Good Luck Message Stones”, that I thought the children may like – they are small, colourful and pretty. With lots of lovely detail.

The originals:

Materials: Stones, acrylic paint, marker pens

 

Paint your stones and let them dry. We did 3 different colours – pink, blue and green.

 

Red Ted decided to draw a bridge, a man, some rainbows and lots of squiggles.

Trying to take our “final shot photo” – small hands kept creeping in!