This is a really fun activity for children of all ages (and adults!) that you can do over several days and is a great way to experiment with light and shadow. You can also keep your painted rocks in a small pouch to create a portable nature game that can be played in just about any season, as long as the sun is out.

What you will need:

Small rocks and pebbles

A small pouch to keep your pebbles in

Leaves, sticks and other nature items

Acrylic paints

Paintbrush

Varnish (optional)

Sunshine!

What you need to do:

1. First you will need to collect your rocks and pebbles. If your children are like mine, you will already have quite a collection to choose from at home! Otherwise, you can collect some on a nature walk - rocks with a smooth or flat surface are easiest to work with.

2. When you are at home, clean your rocks with water and while you wait for them to dry, you can gather your painting supplies. Acrylic paints work really well for painting on rocks and we had plenty of acrylic paints from our Mud & Bloom boxes. You can also use permanent pens such as sharpies if you prefer or to add details to your painted rocks.

3. Next, paint your rocks! These will be used as facial features on your shadows so paint eyes, noses, mouths, eyebrows, moustaches, ears, horns or whatever takes your fancy. We painted both sides of some of our flatter rocks so we had more options to choose from when creating our shadow art. If you want your rocks to be more durable, you can add a layer of varnish after painting. Once the paint or varnish is dry, pop the rocks in your pouch.

4. Choose a sunny day to take your pouch of rocks outside to create your shadow art! The ideal time is when when the sun isn’t directly overhead - depending on the sun’s location and time of day, the shadows may be bigger or smaller, so you might find it interesting to experiment with the time of day.

5. Gather some leaves, sticks, petals, grass or any other nature items that you can find. One of my children picked some blueberries from our garden bush to use as eyes.

6. Create your shadow art! One person will need to cast the shadow and another person can then add features to the shadow using the painted rocks and the nature items. We had lots of fun doing this, positioning our bodies in different ways and seeing what our shadows looked like. Adults should definitely join in too!

7. Once you’ve finished creating your shadow art, you can pop your rocks back in your pouch to use another day.