Nature Treasure Hunts with Kids

There are lots of ways to make hiking more enticing to kids. I have one friend who ran ahead and hid little toys along the trail for her young daughter to find as she walked. There's always the alphabet game or rainbow game: find something that starts with every letter, or in every color, in order, as you walk along the trail. 

We have a really great program in our area (central Vermont and New Hampshire) called Valley Quests that has largely done this job for us. Valley Quests are simply walks or hikes in the area made into treasure hunts. There is a quest box at the end-- the top of the mountain or whatever the destination is-- containing a log book to sign your name and write a message if you desire, a tidbit of information about the site, and a handmade stamp with an ink pad so you can make a stamp and remember you were there.  (You could stamp on anything; we own one of the Quest books so we've taken to collecting all our stamps in the back of that.) Along the way there are clues to mark your journey: a huge burl on the side of a tree, an old stone wall, a distant view of a particular mountain from a certain spot.

I have absolutely loved them. There isn't any actual treasure to collect, besides the stamp and the satisfaction of finding the box, which is sometimes pretty tricky! But just having the clues to read and the thrill of being the first to spot this or that landmark is motivating and fun. 

Countless times when I have had time to "kill" with one kid while waiting to pick the other up from an activity, I've gone to the Valley Quest site, where you can search by town, and checked out what quests might be in the vicinity. I am continually impressed that we find special little spots we never knew about this way, even though my husband and I have lived in this area for twenty years.

Where's M?

I feel it is important to note that in general I do not love scavenger-hunt-type things; give a group of kids (or their chaperones!) a scavenger hunt to do on a museum field trip, for example, and you can guarantee they will race through the museum frantically checking things off while being blind to anything and everything not on The List. Scavenger hunts can falsely prescribe what's important and turn off any natural learning or interest. Stepping off my soap box now... Somehow Valley Quests feel different; they introduce us to new natural places, and they make us actually slow down on a walk and really look at all the details around us. Since these quests take place in nature, quite often things have changed a bit since the quest author wrote the clue and now the young sapling is a full-grown tree or the rotting log is fully covered in moss. A "birch with bark so white" took us a long time because it had lost all its bark since the clue had been written. But it's neat to look and look and look and only adds to the excitement when we figure those things out too. 

Finally found it!

Collecting the stamp

Found it!

They aren't all big hikes either-- lots of them are quite short indeed. We've even done a Civil-War-themed cemetery quest, as well as a quest to the tiniest park that we never would have noticed otherwise in downtown Lebanon, NH.

Civil-War-themed cemetery quest

Quest to a tiny downtown park

Our love of Quests inspired my kids and I to make one of our own this year. It was a process, but pretty straight-forward, because the Valley Quest site lays out the steps and materials needed very clearly. We had several fun outings, choosing to do our research on especially nice days, as we tried to settle on a location for our Quest. There was some debate about where it should be-- we didn't want it to be too intense or long of a hike so as not to scare some people away from doing it. We wanted it to be relatively convenient for us to check in on from time to time. We wanted it to be a special spot, with a defined destination, not just a random walk. We wanted it to be in the woods, not in a busy or residential area where it would get accidentally spotted or messed with. Eventually we came to agreement. 

And then we walked it some more. We all brought along clipboards or notebooks and jotted down ideas for fun landmarks and clues. Back at home, we synthesized them into an order. In a few separate sittings, we word-smithed a bit, deciding not to stress ourselves out with rhyming (many Quests we'd done, but not all, seemed to rhyme). We also decided to draw a rough, not-to-scale map to go with it-- my son took this on. We decided to make it a riddle Quest, with blanks to fill in as you go and then some letters to unscramble at the end because my daughter had really enjoyed a Quest of that type we'd done before. Finally, we did a little basic research about the Appalachian Trail and wrote up a paragraph about it to include in our box, because our Quest happens to be located along it. 

Hard at work

Finally, we were down to a really fun art project: carving a rubber stamp. Each Quest has its own unique stamp. We had some different ideas about what our stamp should be. In the end, we had such fun carving the stamps and liked them all so much that we decided to put all three in our finished box and let Questers themselves decide which they wanted to use.       

We submitted our Quest to Vital Communities, the organization that manages them, and they accepted it and posted it to their site. Find it here! 

In our finished plastic Quest box we placed: a small notebook to be a log book, a pencil, a manual pencil sharpener, our stamps, an ink pad, and our card of information about the area. 

It was fun to work on a joint project together, and doing so was a reminder that, with my kids almost five years apart and with different temperaments, it can be pretty challenging to work on a joint project together and meet everybody's needs and wishes! But we did it. Like any big, long-term project, there's a sense of satisfaction when all the pieces come together in the end. (And when we visited our box in the woods recently, after first placing it there about a month ago, it was a reward to find that three people had already visited and signed the log book.) 

We're pretty proud of our Quest and if you ever find yourself in the "Upper Valley" (the Connecticut River Valley area of central Vermont and New Hampshire) with a little extra time on your hands, you might want to check it out. Find our own full Quest here!  

Do you have any programs like Valley Quest in your area, or do you do anything like this to make walks more enticing for your kids?  

Rodgers and Hammerstein Unit Studies for Kids

This past summer, some old friends invited my daughter and I to join them to see Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella at the North Shore Music Theatre. We did and it was excellent. After that weekend, we realized more than we had before how big a deal musical theater is for our girl. She couldn't stop talking about the costumes, especially Cinderella's and the fairy godmother's rags that transformed into gorgeous ball gowns when they spun around right before our eyes. Then there was the fascination with the way the show portrayed aspects of the story, like the prop "horses" lit up with Christmas lights taking Cinderella to the ball. And there were some plot twists we weren't expecting, like the fact that after a second ball Cinderella intentionally leaves a shoe behind. And most of all, the music. We were Rodgers & Hammerstein newbies before that show and were immediately enchanted by the wonderful songs. Within a couple of weeks M had them all memorized, belting them out throughout the day, humming them constantly, getting them stuck in all of our heads. 

Added up, the experience really lit something in her that honestly has stayed alive ever since. It made us want to get her out in the world to see plays and musicals whenever possible, ...AND it inspired one of the most fun things we've been up to this school year: unit studies on Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals! 

Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical Theater Unit Studies for Kids

 

We started with a Cinderella study, then about a month later we moved onto The Sound of Music, and after that State Fair, and finally The King and I. With each one, we began with simply watching the movie, then moved on to check out different versions, do related activities, go on field trips when possible, and end with some sort of special culminating project. These unit studies have been a high point in her week. Here are the fun activities and lessons we've done that you might want to try with any musical-loving kids in your life. I listed them in roughly the order we did them. 

Unit Study: Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella

• The Show: We watched Cinderella live at the North Shore Musical Theatre. It really made an impression! 

• The Songs: We listened to Spotify playlists of R&H Cinderella songs in the car, both the Julie Andrews version and Broadway versions, over and over...and over and over... There are so many great songs, from "In My Own Little Corner" to "Impossible/It's Possible" to "Lovely Night" and more.

• Singing: I Googled lyrics to many of the songs, by M's request, and printed them out for her so she could sing along whenever she wanted and learn the trickier parts. (She also discovered for me that if I let her hold my phone, she could read the lyrics at the bottom of the Spotify screen for the song being played.)

• Other R&H Cinderella Productions: There are so many Cinderella films out there, and we watched two other R&H ones we loved:
• The 1957 version of R&H's Cinderella on YouTube, which we were delighted to find since it doesn't appear to be available anywhere else to stream. It's black and white, was broadcast live on TV in 1957, when it received the biggest television audience for anything up till that point, and stars Julie Andrews. The YouTube video includes a modern introduction by Julie Andrews, and is definitely worth watching. 

• We also watched the version with Brandy as Cinderella, which features Whitney Houston as fairy godmother (M's self-declared "favorite fairy godmother") singing "There's Music in You," which is a R&H song pulled out of old files of theirs and unique to this movie. This one has a diverse cast, and the set and props are peppy and colorful. 

• Online Lessons: We found the Musical Theatre Project online and enjoyed the Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella unit lessons there (a legacy left there from Covid quarantine days). The lessons were brief and to the point and full of good energy. We learned a dance to "A Lovely Night," saw brief videos about Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and discussed Cinderella's character traits, among other things.

• Read Aloud: There are so many picture book versions of Cinderella, from all over the world, and we read a LOT of them. This gave us a chance to discuss a lot of things-- similarities, differences, themes, authors' choices-- in a kid-friendly way. I made sure we discussed early on what a "rags to riches" story is, and also what a "fairy tale," by definition, is. I was a little worried that by spending all this time on Cinderella that I would be teaching her to value love at first sight or salvation in the form of rescue by a handsome prince! But what was neat was the more we learned and the more stories we read, we started to see more and more the deeper, admirable aspects of this timeless tale-- like the feeling of wishing for something deeply. And Cinderella has a lot of special traits beyond her beauty: she is hopeful, kind, resilient, optimistic (hardly ever letting those mean step sisters really get her down), and in most versions she shows forgiveness in the end, despite all her hardship.    

• Cinderella with a Modern Twist: Since we were becoming such experts in how this tale has been told in different places at different times in different ways, we watched one other movie version of Cinderella that was not Rodgers and Hammerstein. It was a modern version, starring Camila Cabello and featuring Idina Menzel as the stepmother. In it, Cinderella dreams of being a dress designer. This film is a musical, with characters singing a great variety of popular music, from "You Gotta Be" to "Let's Get Loud." My favorites are Cinderella singing "Million to One" as she dreams, and the stepmother and stepsisters singing "Material Girl." This version is so fast-paced and energetic, and just surprising, that's it's really very enjoyable. 

• Culminating Project: Write your own Cinderella: And as a grand finale, my daughter wrote her own Cinderella story. First we listed the features that so many of the stories had: magic, a mean step family, a hard-working main character, a fairy godmother person (or animal in many cases), a happy ending, and so on. Then M chose which aspects she wanted to include in hers. She was inspired to make the fairy godmother in her version a unicorn, who takes Cinderella (who she renamed with her own name) across a rainbow to the ball. She voice typed the story in Google Docs, we printed it off as a booklet in Word, and she illustrated it with stickers and stamps and stencils!

Cinderella story planning sheet

Voice-typing: a break from the physical effort of writing to let the creativity flow :) 

M's own Cinderella story

Unit Study: Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music

• The Show: We watched The Sound of Music on Disney Plus.

• Singing the Songs: M was immediately consumed by the story and all the songs; it's so sweet and fun, it would be hard not to be. Again we listened to the soundtrack on Spotify a lot and I printed out lyrics to various songs for her, from "Edelweiss" to "I Have Confidence."

• Field Trip: We heard stories about the real Maria and the rest of the real von Trapp family on a history tour at the Trapp Family Lodge, which happens to be within easy driving distance from us. While we were there, M and I treated ourselves to lunch out, where we sampled schnitzel-- which is one of Maria's "Favorite Things" in the song of that name.   

Sampling schnitzel

These hills at the Trapp Family Lodge in VT are reminiscent of the Alps...

von Trapp family tree, at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, VT

• Baking: Continuing with the food theme, we experienced another of the "Favorite Things" for ourselves by baking our own "crisp apple strudel."

"Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels..."

• Online Articles: We enjoyed looking at the old family photos in this Mental Floss article, and particularly two videos: one of Maria von Trapp teaching Julie Andrews the right way to yodel (really cute and funny) and another of an interview with an elderly Maria von Trapp. 

• Other R&H Sound of Music Production: We couldn't resist checking out a 2018 made-for-TV version of The Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood, but (in my opinion) it was a very weak replica and overall pretty underwhelming, so I don't really recommend it... 

• Violin: My daughter plays violin, so we added "Do Re Mi" to her repertoire with this video.

• Dancing: We tried to dance the Landler, the Austrian folk dance featured in the film, with this YouTube tutorial.

• Yodeling: We read a great, short National Geographic article about the origins of yodeling in Switzerland with video demonstration by a native, and then we tried it out ourselves with this simple how-to video on yodeling. I'm not sure we were catching on properly, but we had a lot of laughs making some very strange noises while trying. 

• Culminating Project: Rewrite "My Favorite Things": For a final project, I had M write her own version of "My Favorite Things." It's the type of song that's just asking to be rewritten, and everyone's version will come out uniquely. (If I still had an elementary school classroom, I would be doing this project with my whole class!) I had M just brainstorm a bunch of little things in life that make her happy, and she came up with everything from her favorite Disney characters to twirly dresses to big square marshmallows from a local bakery. For the stanza about when she's "feeling sad" she came up with dogs jumping on her and her parents saying no. :) We checked out this simple rewrite example, and used this lesson plan to guide us, particularly using the big idea of focusing on the stress pattern of the syllables. Getting her ideas to fit a certain number of syllables, not to mention placing emphasis on parts of words that wouldn't normally have the emphasis in order to match the stress pattern, was a moderate challenge for a musical 7-year-old, and I think her song turned out amazing-- it's a keepsake for sure. 

M's version of "My Favorite Things"

Unit Study: Rodgers & Hammerstein's State Fair 

• The Show: We watched the 1945 version of State Fair on Amazon Prime. (I don't recommend the 1962 version, available on YouTube, for young kids.) Both my kids enjoyed the comedic elements and it was a simple, though dated, story of the Frake family of Iowa heading to the state fair for the weekend. Mr. Frake is wrapped up in the well being of his prize pig, Mrs. Frake with her award-winning mince meat, while teenage (?) children Margy and Wayne wander around the fair and each has a romantic adventure (that remains chaste in this 1945 version). 

• The Songs: There are a few fun songs, from "Our State Fair" to "It's a Grand Night for Singing" to "Ioway." Per usual, we listened to the soundtrack and printed off lyrics for my daughter to sing along in the car to her heart's content.    

• State Fair Culture: To get a sense of the culture of the Iowa State Fair, we watched a few short PBS videos about it. 

• Learning about the Setting: Occasionally when we are studying a certain place in the world, or about to go on a trip, we check out the Smithsonian Channel's Aerial America series. There is an episode for every state. The episodes are less than an hour, and consist of fly-over footage of a place with voiceover narrating interesting facts and history. We watched Aerial America: Iowa and got lots of views of all those farm fields, and even some of the state fair. 

• Comparing Stage and Screen: We watched a few clips from other stage and screen productions of State Fair. It's always interested to compare the actors, the sets, the costumes, and more with my daughter.  

• Culminating Project: Cooking: We found this old article about a prize-winning mince meat at the Iowa State Fair in the 70s. And we used this recipe to give it a try. I don't think it was anybody's favorite (is it dinner? is it dessert?) but it was fun to try, as the mince meat scenes in the movie are some of the funniest moments.

Had to try out mince meat pie

Unit Study: Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I 

• The Show: We watched the 1956 movie, starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner. I had never seen this movie myself it was impressed with it. It has compelling characters and so many interesting aspects to discuss. It is a story based on a novel, which was based on the memoirs of a real person, Anna Leonowens. 
• A bit about the facts and history: Anna took a job teaching the children and wives of King Mongkut of Siam in 1862. (I thought the polygamy aspect might be weird for a kid, but it wasn't a focus in the movie, and I just told her that in many Asian cultures at that time it was common for the king to have more than one wife and she accepted that.) It was a time when nearly every country in Southeast Asia was becoming a colony of a European power. King Mongkut was strategic in handling this, bending to certain pressures but managing to maintain Siam's independence-- and apparently Thailand is the only Southeast nation that has never been colonized. He was progressive in some ways, interested in western developments in science and technology, while he was very traditional in others. Anna was an educated woman, a widow, an experienced traveler, and later part of the suffragette movement. The story takes place at the time of the American Civil War, and in part of the film the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin is portrayed through a Siamese ballet. 

• Discussion Topics: The tension, debates, and friendship the movie portrays between an intelligent, progressive yet traditional monarch, and the modern western woman who arrives at the palace and speaks her mind from the first moment is possibly the best thing about the movie. There were so many interesting topics and themes that we discussed in an age-appropriate way (and a number of them we could have done even more with if my daughter had been older), including:
• What is slavery? What was Uncle Tom's Cabin (mentioned, and portrayed through a ballet scene in the movie) about? What was the Civil War about?
• How can the world feel different depending on one's perspective? (There is a great scene showing the world map with a predominant Siam in the middle of it that the prince/heir knows, contrasted with the "real" world map Anna presents when she is teaching, and there is also a moment when she teaches the children about snow and they don't believe her.)
• The idea of women's roles
• Should things be done in a traditional way, or a new, "scientific" way?
• Power-- what should a good king, or other leader, be like?

• Singing the Songs: This movie has great music and my daughter loved singing the songs as she does every time she watches a new musical, in this case everything from the sweet "Getting to Know You" to the optimistic "Whistle a Happy Tune" to the sweeping-across-the-stage polka "Shall we Dance." 

• Analyzing the Songs: We took the time to read and analyze some King and I lyrics as well, such as the song "A Puzzlement" which is a solo sung by the king. I asked M what the song was really about and the emotions of the character singing it, and we discussed what certain lines meant.

• Comparing Stage and Screen: We checked out some video clips and photos from various productions of The King and I. 

• Other R&H King and I Production: We also watched a 1999 animated, kiddie version of The King and I, which added a plot twist or two and was fun to see for comparison's sake. 

• Lessons: I found an excellent Lincoln Center teacher's guide for The King and I. Some of it was aimed at older kids so I picked and chose activities that worked for us. For my 7-year-old, I particularly loved these parts of it:
• An introduction the the American Musical (page 10 of the guide)
• The first six minutes of this intro to Broadway: The American Musical series, narrated (of course) by Julie Andrews
• An activity to help us analyze the song "A Puzzlement" sung by the king in the movie (page 10 - 11)
• The history, which I summarized above, about the real people and place that this movie was based on (page 12 - 19)
• Learning about the "Book Musical," which Rodgers and Hammerstein first created with Oklahoma (a movie I decided not to watch with my 7-year-old because of the content and amount of innuendo, by the way) and the musical theatre building blocks: music, dance, and theater. We also here learned the names of some of the many jobs involved in making a Broadway show, from choreographer to lyricist to designers, composers, and orchestrators. (page 22 - 26)

• Culminating Project: Musicalize a Favorite Book: The Musical Moments writing activity, described in brief on page 27 of the Lincoln Center guide, inspired our culminating project for The King and I (and really for all the musicals we've studied): a song-writing mini unit. 
• First, we reviewed a bunch of musical numbers M already knew, having her name which characters sing them, what type of song they are, how the character is feeling/what they want in the song, and what important moment in the plot or "turning point" it occurs at. We used these examples: 
• "The Schuyler Sisters" from Hamilton
• "Part of your World" from The Little Mermaid
• "I Just Can't Wait to be King" from The Lion King
• "The Next Right Thing" from Frozen 2
• "I Have Confidence" from The Sound of Music
• "My Own Little Corner" from Cinderella
• "When will my Life Begin?" from Tangled
• After this review, we chose a story we wanted to try to imagine as a musical. We could have used any (non-musical) movie or even perhaps a picture book, but it was a good opportunity to spend some time with some wonderful chapter books we had recently read together, so I had her choose from among these three: 
• Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
• Clementine by Sara Pennypacker
• Gooseberry Park by Cynthia Rylant
• Then I had her list a few moments from the book that she thought would be good to musicalize (i.e. important moments in the plot, or times that show what characters want or strong emotions. The moment could consist of interactions between characters or be just a moment of the character thinking to herself).  
• For each of the moments, she had to decide: which characters would sing it? What type of song would it be (fast, slow, funny, serious, etc.)? Would there be dancing with it, and if so what type (ballet, hip hop, etc.)? 
• Finally, she chose one moment and wrote a song to go with it! 
• If you were so inclined, or for older students, you could write it from scratch, like a poem, but for our purposes I had M choose a song she knew and change the words.  I was ready to offer as resources for this song lists from the Disney and other musicals she knew. But as it turned out, she had an amazing ability to pull a song out of the air that she felt had a beat or tone that matched her book moment she wanted to musicalize. I printed out the song as it was, and then next to the original lines she wrote her own new words. 
• Together we wrote a song to go with Beezus and Ramona-- a song about how Ramona is always getting into mischief without really intending to, and how her family helps her figure a way out of it somehow, that we imagined being sung by her sister Beezus, to the tune of "Whistle a Happy Tune" (a song from The King and I). 
• Then, more independently, M wrote a song for Gooseberry Park about Kona the dog's icy adventure across town to find and rescue his squirrel friends. She almost instantly thought of "Rhythm Nation" which she knows from the Camila Cabello modern Cinderella movie and wrote great lines such as "A ve-ry, ve-ry, ve-ry big risk!" in place of "Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm nation!"....and "I have to find you right no-o-o-ow" in place of "We are a part of the rhythm nation." 

A musicalized moment from a favorite young reader chapter book, Gooseberry Park

This unit was so much fun. The best part was when M told me in the midst of the song writing at the end of it that writing time-- which normally requires serious effort on her part and some cajoling on mine-- was "so fun right now."   

A few final notes:

We spent less time overall on State Fair because (in my opinion) it just isn't the timeless, magical work of art that the others are. But we still found some topics to study and had fun with the music.

The Rodgers and Hammerstein site has a list of all their shows and a wealth of information about each one, including photos and video clips, and lists of various productions. It is a great resource worth checking out.  

This unit was a good reminder to me of everything homeschool can be: interest-based, personalized, multidisciplinary, memorable, fun, project-based, hands-on...I want to do more unit studies like this! 

I hope if you try these units you have as much fun with them as we did and that your heart, too, will be blessed with the sound of music. :) 

The Joy of Painting Step by Step

 

We love online step by step painting tutorials as homeschool art projects (I may have mentioned this in 2020 and 2021). 

First of all, everyone's painting of the same subject comes out completely differently. Each artist's style is all over each work of art. Just check out some of the many differences above.

Second, we learn a lot by doing step by step painting projects. While the end goal is to create a particular picture, the kids and I always learn painting techniques along the way that carry over into other projects. To name a few things we've learned: 

• to make leaves, reflections, snow on the top of a mountain, a background sky that fades from bright blue to lighter blue
• how to mix paints (or, rather, how to not mix them too much)
• to paint the canvas or spray it with water first to help the paints blend more smoothly
• to intentionally use the same brush without cleaning it sometimes
• how to make some trees and mountains look farther away or closer up
• all sorts of brush techniques, including holding your white-dipped brush above your painting and tapping it to make it look like it's snowing, and, using a bundle of Q-tips to make flower blossoms  

Each of these techniques we absorb makes us feel a little more adept at the skills of painting, and a little more likely to dream up our own picture and tackle a canvas on our own.

Third, of course, you get beautiful art to hang on the wall. We are always rotating the art work on display in our house, but a pretty canvas is one of the nicer, more polished pieces to decorate with.

Perhaps most importantly, doing a step by step painting project is a great opportunity to practice just trying our best and being patient with ourselves.   

Trying out Bob Ross's Joy of Painting Tutorials

This winter I had a paint and sip night at home with a friend. Since Bob Ross's classic The Joy of Painting show is available to stream on Amazon, we chose one of his paintings to do: "Mountain Lake." I always keep 11 x 14" canvases on hand for art projects, so we used those. Bob Ross uses oil paints. You can buy trademark Bob Ross oil paint sets (and brushes and tools...) online but they are pretty pricey. I don't use oil paints with the kids, and wasn't sure I wanted to use them myself either, so for this project we stuck with a nice set of heavy body acrylic paints we had. While they didn't include all the same colors or color names as Bob Ross's paints, some of them were the same and we could find something close enough for each step of the project. Two tools Bob Ross often uses are a fan brush, and a palette knife. I'd love to get those in the future to try them out, but we just used the variety of brushes in all sizes and shapes that I keep in a jar with our art supplies, and we made do just fine. While the episode was less than a half hour long, we ended up pausing the video a bunch of times to paint and then we'd watch a bit more, pause, paint, and so on. We were at it over two hours altogether but it was such a fun night. 

There's something about taking the time to do something just for the sake of being creative; as an adult I don't do that nearly enough and it's so fulfilling. One downside worth noting: I'd pictured an evening of sipping wine and chatting with my friend while painting, but we didn't do much talking (or wine drinking) because the painting itself took a lot of focus and effort! Our paintings are below; one came out looking like fall, while the other looks more like spring, and one of us oriented it horizontally and the other vertically. We both have a beautiful picture to hang in our houses now; the compliments from my family afterward were very ego-boosting to hear.

In the past, I'd watched a few Joy of Painting episodes with my kids, and they loved seeing the beautiful picture magically appear on the canvas and found it mesmerizing to watch and listen to, as I think many people do. My son went around afterward sharing some awesome Bob Ross quotes, his favorite being his unique encouragement about painting trees, which was something like: "sometimes these son of a guns don't want to come outta your brush, but you just gotta make 'em." You can't help but be charmed by his reverence for "almighty mountains," and of course his happy accidents, free clouds, and happy trees-- not to mention his hairdo. I can see watching Joy of Painting episodes when you just need a little encouragement in your life, whether or not you paint along. His entire message in all his gentle conversation as he paints is about the growth mindset, in an old-timey, grandfatherly kind of way. Bob Ross tells you that mistakes are okay, it doesn't have to be perfect, there's no wrong way to paint a tree/rock/cloud, just relax and try, don't agonize over every detail. It's so wonderful and soothing-- no wonder his show was on for 31 seasons.

Bob Ross's Joy of Painting with Kids

So, after my grown-up painting night, my son (11) was impressed with our results and eager to give a Bob Ross painting a try. Previously my kids have done several different online step by step painting projects, our favorites being from Step by Step Painting with Tracie Kiernan (see end of this post for pictures of one of those, as well as pandas and llamas above). Those projects are definitely simpler than Bob Ross's-- especially since she has a selection of paintings just for kids. But W was ready to try a little more of a challenge, so we went for it. Bob Ross's landscape pictures are all so pretty, it was hard to choose which one. My winter-loving son of course chose a snowy scene. 

We picked an afternoon when we didn't have to be anywhere at a certain time so we wouldn't feel rushed. We set up our area: the computer to play the episode, our canvases, all the brushes we own, a couple of paper towels, a cup of water for rinsing our brushes, a paper plate for each of us for mixing our paints. It went really well for a couple hours. We painted a background, mountains, clouds. It was so neat to see how different our paintings were turning out as we progressed; even though we'd both used the same two colors, the sky in each of our paintings showed two different moods entirely. 

Trying out his own technique for clouds

After a while, W started to get frustrated trying to paint his trees. He didn't like how his trees were turning out, so he painted over them and tried again. He proceeded to do this several times, getting more and more impatient with himself. I tried to remind him of Bob Ross's mantras. The trees don't need to be perfect. Everybody's trees will be different. Just go with it, relax, no pressure, it will all look good in the end as part of the whole painting. It was hard for him to hear any of that right then. He eventually walked away, took a break and a few breaths, and returned to paint a few last steps, and the paintings turned out great: 

I'm really glad my son and I tried out a Bob Ross painting. It was something creative we could do together. It was a chance to really focus on one thing for an extended period of time. It was a good challenge, for both of us. And, except for those few tense moments in the trees, it was a lot of fun. I think it's good to intentionally try new, hard things that stretch us and require persistence.

~

...Because of the time and challenge level, I think it was also a good choice that only my oldest tried the Bob Ross painting. But my daughter (7) didn't want to be left out of the painting fun. A few days later she and I painted beautiful, bright springy scenes of Mt. Fuji and cherry blossoms, from the StepbyStep painting site:  

In summary, any step by step painting project is a super fun, creative activity for all ages. Here's our tips on doing one, whichever source you choose.

Tips for Using Step by Step Painting Tutorials

1. Bob Ross paintings are best for adults and older kids-- tweens and up.
2. There are many good, free step by step painting sources online. Tracy Kiernan's site is a favorite for all ages, and better for younger kids.  
3. Clear a big surface area before starting the project.
4. Gather your tools: acrylic paints, brushes, water cup, paper towels, canvas, device to watch or read instructions from.
5. Acrylics work for Bob Ross paintings, even though he uses oil.
6. Don't worry if you don't have the exact tools or exact colors that the instructor does. Just use whatever you have that's close.
7. It's your painting; it's okay to choose a different color or to make other choices differently than the instructor.  
8. Watch, pause, paint, repeat. Don't try to paint and watch at the same time.
9. Make sure you have a significant chunk of open, free time before you start a painting-- two to three hours. It's no fun if you have to either rush, or have to clean it up and get it back out a second time. 
10. It's most fun if everyone painting agrees to do the same painting. Once I tried letting each of my kids choose a painting they wanted to do and I supervised and helped both of them pause and start their video on separate devices as needed. It was a little overwhelming for me to keep tabs on what step each of them was on, and they each felt in their own world (plus, I didn't get to paint myself). Much more fun to see your companions' different but similar pictures appearing next to yours and be able to encourage each other along, step by step. 
11. Try not to get frustrated and just have fun with it.