Rock Painting Spring Craft for Earth Day or Mother's Day

It's spring and I wanted to do a fun craft project that I could do with the COTA (Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant) I'm working with or with the life skills classes I work with. Looking through ideas online, I decided to do rock painting, using numerous rocks to form "turtles".

Procedure

My COTA created a 2-page sheet for our students to follow along with directions.

1. Paint body

2. Paint legs

3. Paint head

1. Paint lines on body

2. Paint lines on legs

3. Paint a face on the head

Once we finished with one step of the directions, the student crossed it off. We did page one on the first day and page two on the second.

I try to build in as many opportunities as possible for the students during my lessons. Before we started, the students picked out the rocks that they want to use.  I found the rocks online and also had some donated to me.  We could have collected them ourselves, but given time, I decided to purchase them.

Each student had a palette, where they could put different colors of paint in each of the indented spaces.

Preparation

The students wore paint shirts, which are men's shirts that they put on backwards to protect the clothes the students are wearing. The students got to pick out their own paintbrushes. Having the tablecloth or butcher paper under the rocks allows the students to take a practice stroke of the paintbrush or to practice their designs. 

When the students are finished with their painting and the rocks are dry, the rocks are then sprayed with a shellac to seal in the designs. 

Some of the "turtles" will be sent home for Mother's Day and the extras we made will be given to our administrators as an Earth Day gift.