To celebrate Earth Day this year, I decided to introduce the kids to plant pigments! So, we released the plant pigments from items throughout our yard using a rubber mallet. We then used those plant pigments to color our Earth drawing. This is such a fun and educational activity for kids.
Supplies needed for this Earth Day craft:
- 2 sheets of cardstock paper – I have linked my favorite card stock paper below. You’ll want to use a good durable cardstock so it doesn’t rip during craft time.
- Permanent marker
- Rubber mallet
- Leaves, clovers, flowers, etc
How to extract and color with plant pigments:
1. Take a sheet of cardstock paper and draw the outline of Earth.
2. Then search your yard for different colorful plants such as leaves, clovers, flowers, etc.
3. Then lay the different plants face down on your cardstock paper and used a rubber mallet to hammer the plant and release the plant pigments.
- Warning: This part needs parental supervision!
Through trial and error, we found out that it was best to lay another sheet of paper on top of the leaf sandwiching the leaf between two sheets of paper before hammering. This kept the leaf still so you could hammer it a couple times to release more pigment.
We filled the land areas of Earth with green and yellow plants and the water areas of Earth with the purple wild flowers we found.
This was such a fun and easy craft. The kids, of course, loved it because they were able to use the rubber mallet. They were also so excited when we would lift the cover sheet to reveal the different pigments released from the plants!
If you enjoyed this, check out our other tutorial on How to Color Using Plant Pigments that’s linked below. This tutorial uses a different technique for extracting the pigments, other than a mallet.
