A Thoughtful Book & Makeup Wedge Trees!
After reading Yuval Zommer’s “The Tree That’s Meant To Be” we decided to create some makeup wedge trees. Yep, those squishy ones; also called “cosmetic sponges/wedges”. I’m excited to walk you through how we made this simple & beautiful art, so let’s get started…
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Summary of “The Tree That’s Meant To Be”
“The Tree That’s Meant To Be” by Yuval Zommer is a thoughtful book about a tree that’s different than the rest. He’s smaller and not so straight. As winter comes the other trees all around him are chosen to be Christmas trees, but not him. Feeling so sad he thinks he’s worthless. But then the forest animals come and he is their tree, they decorate him and he feels so loved. As the years pass by he realizes the forest is his home and he happily grows where he is meant to be. The illustrations are gorgeous!
How We Made Makeup Wedge Trees…
We tend to keep the activities as simple as possible around here. We’re not interested in complicated or costly. We are also all about fostering independence. For this activity we tried out these cool new baking rollers we found at the dollar tree. We painted them with watercolor paint and rolled them on the thick cardstock paper. We repeated this several times and it made a pretty cool design to give our art some dimension.
Next we grabbed a makeup wedge, dipped it into green paint and stamped it several times all over the paper until the makeup wedge needed more paint on it. You can check out our video of this on our Instagram post here. We wanted to recreate the beautiful forrest scene depicted in the book so we added many trees. I showed my daughter how she could stamp 1/2 of the wedge along the sides or top of the paper to look more realistic, because if this was a photograph all of the trees wouldn’t fit neatly into the picture. We also experimented with stamping the makeup wedges on top of each other, to make some of the trees look taller. That’s really all there was to it; I did mention we like to keep things simple right?! 😉
Lastly we wanted our “Meant To Be Tree” to stand out from the rest. So, we made it smaller by only stamping the top 1/2 of the makeup wedge and then added glitter to only that tree.
Wait?!? Am I Supposed To Be Making One Too?
I highly recommend getting hands on and doing art projects with your child. If you’d rather not, thats okay too, but please do not correct anything they do. If you want the art to look a certain way – make your own.
Especially if your child is little, its okay if it doesn’t turn out the way you imagined. Maybe its what they imagined. Also, its a process. They are learning. They will learn more through trial and error than if you correct them or do it for them. All they will learn if you “help” is that they didn’t do a good enough job on their own or they can’t do it; not exactly the message you want to give your kid. Am I right?!?
Believe me, I know it can be really challenging to let them make “mistakes”. Try doing the project along side them. It will allow you to focus on your own work, give them appropriate modeling of how to use the materials, and show them that you like art too! A lot of what I talk about in “What about the Sensory Mess?” applies to Art projects as well, you might wanna check it out! I love how each art has its own identity. I would suggest Makeup Wedge Trees if you’re looking for an easy and fun art activity to connect with your child.
Materials We Used
- “The Tree That’s Meant To Be” by Yuval Zommer (from the library or buy one here)
- Fondant rolling pin
- Cardstock paper
- Tray
- Watercolor paint
- Makeup Wedges
- Green paint
- Green glitter
Click HERE for Free Printable copy (Email Subscribers Only)
How to Make Makeup Wedge Trees?
- Lay the white cardstock paper on the tray.
- Paint watercolor onto the fondant rolling pin.
- Roll the fondant rolling pin on the paper to create a watercolor design.
- Repeat if necessary to fill in any missed spots to get the look you desire.
- Turn the makeup wedge so that you can see the triangle side.
- Dip that side into green paint and stamp on the paper repeatedly until the paint is faded and needs to be dipped in paint again.
TIPS:
Try making taller trees by stamping it then stamping the top part of the wedge onto the top of the tree. Also don’t forget to have some trees incomplete by stamping them only 1/2 on the paper to create a more realistic appearance.
Lastly decide which tree will be “Meant to be” (we made ours smaller by only stamping the top of the wedge) and add glitter to that one while the paint is still wet.
Click HERE for Free Printable copy (Email Subscribers Only)
Wait, There’s More…
I believe you can easily strengthen communication skills and foster independence all while playing and connecting with your child. To help you do this; I’ve created a FREE printable for each activity called, “Communicating & Connecting”.
It will give you a list of suggestions I’ve found very helpful as a Mom & as a special education teacher; to help you build lifelong skills. Please don’t feel obligated to do everything on the list (but if you do, you’re a rockstar 😉 ).
As a Thank You for subscribing; this is a special FREEBIE for our Email Subscribers Only. 🙂 Click here if you’ve already subscribed. Otherwise, Sign Up below to get the password & access to our entire FREE Printables Library today! 😉
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