“There’s Only One You In this great big world, make it a better place”.
One of our kindergarten teachers Jan Grabeman came to me with a wonderful project she wanted to do with her students. News of the project spread quickly and by the end of this project nearly every student in the building and staff who wanted to participate had painted their little rocks to go into our “Only One you rock stream”.
If you have never read the book “Only One You”, by Linda Kranz, I highly recommend it. It’s a wonderful book for celebrating each person’s uniqueness and teaching simple, life lessons. website: https://www.lindakranz.com/books_only-one-you.php for resources.
Mrs. Grabeman and Mrs. Bensman’s Kindergarden class lead the way with this project, but nearly every student in the building wanted to be a part of it. Let’s face it, kids LOVE to paint rocks. We found out that adults do too! Our wonderful art teacher, Mr. James Piper, opened up his room after school for staff to come in and paint rocks. Staff asked to do it again the next year because they enjoyed how relaxing and enjoyable it was to “hang out and do something fun together”.
Year after year, students come out to see their rocks and their so proud to show them off to their friends.
This project was one of the most enjoyable, we have done in our garden. It was a good way to get many kids involved without spending a lot of money while teaching life lessons at the same time. As I said earlier, it’s not very expensive, and the kids loved picking out their own special-shaped rocks.
Recommendations for this project
1. Draw out, color your design on paper first.
2. An adult should place small amounts of paint on a paper plate and let several students use that plate. Don’t let students divvy out their own paint, or you will have lots of wasted paint. Be sure students know to clean their brushes between paints. Have lots of paper towels handy!
3. Paint the entire rock first, then add other features. Make sure the paint has plenty of time to dry between painting or you’ll have a bit messy. Our students did them over several days.
4. Bottoms of paintbrushes, or pencil, erasers will give you nice round eyes. It’s best to put eyes and mouth on after the rock is painted and dried.
5. I recommend that you spray paint the rocks with a sealing clear spray such as: this one here so that your designs will still look the same for years to come.
6. You might plan to paint 2..we had lots of students who wanted to paint one to take home.
