Young students connect their own growth to changes around them, observing cherry blossoms blooming outside the classroom.

Aileen Pugliese Castro

In Art with Mommy, we often make connections among artists, their work, and everyday life. For this lesson, I worked with mothers and their children to create collaborative artwork. Our Essential Question was: “Do all living things grow?”

During the spring, we examined new growth in our surroundings—trees, gardens, and fields, including budding cherry blossoms that marked the changing season. We also looked at one another. We talked about the lives of these young children, who were looking up at their mothers beside them and wondering, “How did they get so big? Will we grow to be big like our parents someday?”

We gathered together on the floor, where there was room to move, and imagined our bodies as growing trees. We crouched down like tiny seeds in the ground and wiggled our toes like roots beginning to spread. We straightened our legs, torsos, necks, and arms, stretching like branches on a tree. Our fingers became twigs waiting for new leaves.

This exercise supports kinesthetic learning and helps children connect their own growth to that of a tree. It also allows for physical movement—essential for these actively creative young learners.

Once seated at the tables, I provided each pair with paper. I asked the children to make a fist at the edge of the table, then slowly open their fingers, stretching them as we had stretched our bodies. They made their hands and forearms “grow” upward from the edge of the table like puppets. I invited the mothers to do the same, placing their hands next to their child’s. We compared the size difference again, asking, “How did Mommy’s hand get to be bigger?”

I asked the young artists to place their hands on the paper as if their forearms were tree trunks. As their fingers wiggled, we talked about how branches move in the wind while the trunk stays strong. Parents traced their childʼs hand, and children traced their mother’s, creating layered forms on the paper.

Using oil pastels, the artists colored in the trunks and branches. We discussed other characteristics of a tree, like tones and textures, and the children mentioned twigs and leaves as they drew. Next, they painted the background with tempera cakes or watercolor, creating a resist as the pastel lines showed through the paint.

Because it was spring, many of the cherry blossom trees near us had flowers on them. These trees bloom with pinkish-white flowers at the tips of their branches. Using red and white liquid tempera or finger paint in a shallow container, the young artists mixed pink and used their fingertips to stamp blossoms onto their trees.

Children and their parents enjoyed working side by side to create collaborative paintings of cherry blossom trees. The children developed an understanding of size relationships between living things, and they recognized that all living things grow and change.

By observing their environment, students connected their own growth to changes around them. Parents also captured a meaningful moment in their child’s development. I encouraged them to look back at this moment and try painting together every spring to observe new growth, both inside and out.

Aileen Pugliese Castro is a visual art educator in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. aileen@aileenpcastro.com

Authorʼs Note: This lesson was taught at a women’s center with mothers and their children. It can be adapted for use with any parents or guardians and their children.

A Cherry Blossom Tree Study