Grain art is a fun activity to do in the autumn. It has an interesting texture and reminds us of harvest time. I bought dry grains in as many colors as I could find at the grocery store in cheap sealed bags:
- green dried peas
- black beans
- red kidney beans
- white beans
- yellow lentils
We started with black card stock paper as the backdrop. If you want, you can sketch a design in pencil first, filling in one area at a time with glue. Then you glue down each grain. It goes faster if you dump the grain on top of the paper, then lift the paper up. It looks neater and more orderly if you place each grain one by one, but this might be tedious for younger children. It depends what kind of look you want.
You can do symmetrical patterns or a design representing an actual object. My daughter made a star in the center of her paper, spiraling outwards with alternate grains. One of my children chose to make a tree. Another son titled his grain art, “Green Blob with Asteroids.” My oldest son made a spiral ladder leading to nowhere. As you can see, everyone has freedom for their personalities to shine through this art activity!
Tags: art, autumn, crafts, grain art, Homeschooling
Oh my goodness, that is so cool! 🙂 It reminds me of the bean soup we had for dinner the other night, but I think most of my kids would like it better as artwork.
It’s a super fun 3-D art activity!
This looks likes a great project. Fun for me and the kids! 🙂
I did one myself, and it was surprisingly relaxing!
I was looking for ideas on how to use grains in mixed media projects and found this article. I like the star design your daughter made- so cool! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks! The star design came out better than I thought!