Stone Painting
How To Paint Stones
A Read-Along Activity
When the teddy bears are out on their walks, they spend a lot of time not actually walking!! They look at wildflowers by the side of the path or in the fields, or stop and watch birds flying in the sky or listen to them singing in the trees, maybe investigate an interesting old tree, or stop for an ice cream!! That last one is one of their favourite things to do!
When they are at the seaside walking on the beach they collect seashells, but when they are walking near home, they sometimes come across prettily coloured stones, or unusually-shaped ones. They take some of the best stones home with them so they can show each other what they have found. Obviously they don't take too many from any one place. They wash and dry the stones so that they are safe and clean to handle.
When Richard was looking at one of their stones recently, he said he thought it was shaped like a whale! When all the others looked more closely, he was absolutely right! This gave the teddy bears an idea, and out came the paint and brushes. The bears used brightly-coloured poster paints, and a variety of different sized brushes, big ones to cover the stone in colour, and little ones for painting all the details.
Boo decided he would paint the stone to look even more like a whale. He painted it black, and then added a smiling mouth and some blue eyes (he doesn't know if whales have blue eyes, but he thought they looked a lovely colour). When the paint was dry, he varnished it so that the colours would last. Then he cut out a piece of felt to glue to the underside of the stone so that it wouldn't scratch the surface of anything it rested upon. It looked great!!
The rest of the bears then started checking out the pile of stones they had collected over time. Try as they might, though, not every stone looked like any animal they knew! Teddy thought one of the flat stones he chose would look good just painted a pretty colour, with a pattern painted on it. Elizabeth decided she wanted to paint hers like a patchwork quilt - tiny squares of different colours! It took quite a long time for her to finish, but it looked lovely!
Custard decided he would paint a picture of a daisy on his. He painted the stone a pretty background colour, and then very carefully painted on the green leaves, and the white petals, not forgetting the yellow centre. Very nice, Custard!
In the end, they all found a stone to paint, whether they ended up looking like an animal, or just a beautifully coloured background with a pattern or a picture on it.
Look at the picture of the finished stones and try to work out which bear painted which stone! Next time you are out on a walk, see if you can find some interesting stones. Let your imagination run riot! Perhaps the stone could be painted like a tiger (Tommy would like that!) or have a colourful pattern, or show a scene of mountains and lakes, or add a friend's name and give it to them as a gift! You can turn them into whatever you like.
