On Sunday, the kids and I participated in a Wrangell Mountains Center (WMC) program with artist Kristin Link.

All summer long, the WMC offers a selection of artsy programing to kids through the Mountain Arts for Youth Program. This year, kids made recycled instruments, nature collages, an artifact mural, and a community field guide.

Kristin shared with the participants an assortment of field journals, why we have them, and how to make one. Our goal for the day was to create a field journal filled with the plants that exist naturally in the space around us out here in McCarthy.

The kids played hot potato to determine who would get which plant.

As with most programs at the WMC, children of all ages are invited to participate. Because my drawing skills are very limited, I knew it would beyond my comfort zone to participate–and that is the idea. It’s how you learn. I foolishly chose yarrow. Kristin said all the plants are difficult to draw, but yarrow is MORE difficult. I am not sure why I did not simply select raspberry leaves.

After we selected our plants, we went out into the field to see if we could find where each plant liked to live.

We completed a rough draft of our observations out in the field.

From there we headed back to Porphyry Place to create our final drafts of our plants. Kristin showed the students how she rough sketches, then uses water color paints, and finally pencil to create her field sketches.

Here are the results of all our work.

Kristin is a professional artist certified to teach in our schools. If you would like to have your children have this wonderful experience in both art and science, you can learn more by visiting her website and blog.

31 Jul This entry was published on July 31, 2013 at 11:12 AM. It’s filed under Just Plain Stories and tagged Alaska, Mountain Arts for Youth, Wrangell Mountains Center. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.