Finding God in Nature Art Project

Back in this post I shared the ideas for helping kids see God at work in their lives through reflective narrative writing.  My students wrote five narratives this year as part of that project, and also created a corresponding art project to illustrate their writing.  This is one of those five art projects, and it matched with this topic:

o   Finding God in His Creation: Write a story about a time you spent in nature and how you see God’s creative power in the world.

This art project required a little bit of home-to-school coordination, but you could adapt it if needed.  I requested that the kids bring in (or email) a picture of a nature scene from the experience that they wrote about in their essay.  This was a challenge for some of the kids (sometimes because they didn't have a picture from the particular location, or because it had a group of people in it) so we would just find an image online that was similar to the location in nature that they wrote about.

Next step, print the picture in black and white on a sheet of 8.5x11" paper.

Then have the kids color something in the black and white picture that they would like to highlight.  It could be the sunset, or one particular flower, or the river in the background.

Next, have them cut the picture into 8-10 vertical strips.  Have them think of a word that describes God based on how they see Him in nature.  Common words my kids used were Creator, Majestic, Awesome, etc.  Have them write one letter of the word on each strip of paper.

Finally, glue the strips down on a colored piece of construction paper, with a small amount of space in between each strip and a slight change in the "height" of the strip.  The effect is that the simple picture of an object in nature becomes almost an optical illusion.

Take these for example:

For more info and resources about our Write Your Story on My Heart project, click here: