Cave Painting

(Picture Credit: kinderart.com)

The younger kids at our co-op were studying caves, so we've been learning about them at home as well. They're putting together a folder of art in their zoology class and needed to make a "cave painting" on a crumpled brown paper bag, so we found some pictures of animals to paint on the bag. That was lots of fun. But, we didn't stop there. At kinderart.com we found a way to make our own paint for cave painting. (You can find the directions here). While we didn't have a cave, we sure had animal fat. Yep, animal fat! Way back in ancient history, man used animal fat and dirt to make paint. So, we took that jar of bacon grease that sits next to the stove, mixed it with dirt, and voila! Our own little sample of the very first oil paints.


At first my 6-year-old wasn't too keen on the idea because he thought it would smell awful. I started pouring the grease into the dirt and mixing it, and then he took interest and took over. I reminded him that it couldn't be half as bad as it was for the people who actually had to kill an animal and use THAT fat for paint. We had it easy.


This was an unusual, but fun project. We definitely went outside the box for this one (or shall I say that the folks at kinderart did).  Daddy even tried his hand at cave painting--and then somehow we transitioned into impromptu digging for earthworms and centipedes and did some research about them as well... And so goes the day of a homeschool family. I delight when I get to see the kids enjoying learning. It truly is a joyous moment!