Fun stamped tree painted with broccoli

Are you looking for a fun family activity to do today? Broccoli heads are ideal for dabbing paint onto canvas to create clouds, flower buds, and trees.

What you need

• A4 Canvas 
• Acrylic paints in the following colours: light sky blue, brown, green, light pastel pink, pink, and red-violet
• Broccoli heads
• Pencil
• Paint brushes
• 6 Paper plates

How to make it

1. To make clouds, squirt a blob of white paint onto a paper plate. Let your child dip the broccoli head into the paint and then on the top upper half of the canvas. Don’t brush the paint around; just dab it. Create light, airy clouds with rounded edges. 
2. In pencil, draw the outline of the tree trunk. The trunk will extend about one-third of the way up the canvas.
3. Apply four blobs of paint to a clean paper plate, using two different shades of pink, red-violet, and green paint. Place the blobs close together so that the broccoli head can dip into all four blobs at the same time. Remember to dab rather than brush the broccoli with paint.
4. Help your child to dip a second piece of fresh broccoli into the four blobs of paint and then dab the paint onto the canvas. It will create a mottled pattern of the four colours. The goal is for the paint to resemble the multi-coloured buds of a blooming tree. Again, as with the clouds, the goal is to achieve a lighter, more airy look rather than a solid mass of colour. You should be able to see some of the sky through the tree’s buds as your child dabs.
5. Continue to dab the tree’s buds into the paints on the plate until your child is satisfied with how it looks. To cover the entire tree with painted buds, you may need to add more of the four paint colours to the plate.