Preschool Picture Book and Art - A Tree is Nice and Cork Tree Painting

This week I decided to read one of our less-read books on Zeke's shelf - A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry. There is nothing wrong with this book; in fact, it's a wonderful and beautiful picture book about why trees are so fantastic. I really don't know why we don't read it more often!

I decided a simple art project would be painting or stamping with cork. We had cork leftover from our study on Ferdinand with Titus a few years ago. I think I got the cork pieces from Hobby Lobby for a couple of bucks. 

I drew a simple tree outline on brown paper and gave Zeke the cork pieces with some green paint on a piece of discarded cardboard. 

He really had fun stamping the cork to make leaves all over the tree! It doubled as a fine motor activity because he was using his pincher grasp to hold the cork and using his finger, hand, and wrist muscles to stamp the paint on the tree outline over and over again.

This would be a beautiful craft to do for a fall tree with red, orange, and yellow paint. It was simple and took less than ten minutes to set up, complete, and clean up from. 

Check out Zeke's feather painting from the book Birds by Keven Henkles last week!