Beauty and Purpose: Spotlight on Painted and Pine
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One of the very first products I knew I wanted to incorporate into our open-ended playspace was quality art and genuine imprints of nature wherever possible. I didn’t expect to stumble upon such beautiful resources as the ones created by Emily at Painted and Pine, but I am oh-so-grateful that I did!
I started our collection of hand-painted, elegant, and purposeful flashcards with both the alphabet and numbers 1-20. As displayed in most of my pictures on Instagram, our living room doubles as our playroom and I always have at least one set strung up on our walls or windows at any given time. Not only are they meaningful with respect to learning letters and numbers, they are the perfect decor for any space!
My daughter (4) used the alphabet cards daily when she first opened them up on Christmas. She matched any other letter manipulatives we had in the house with the cards, she used them as a guide to form letters on her whiteboards, and she even endeavored to create CVC words. She started to mentally create an association between the nature-inspired object painted on each card with its corresponding letter and loved to trace and/or copy the image.
It didn’t take long for her to move onto her interest in numbers and what I love about these cards is the number representation in the painted pictures. My daughter loves to count the starfish, the tigers, and the swordfish! Using these cards is a perfect way to expose your children to new foods, plants, and animals in a fun and open-ended way. Recognizing numbers leads to counting, but actually understanding how much a number represents -- the value of a digit -- is a deeper concept that takes some time and processing; for this reason, these cards have been used on a daily basis with my children. My daughter is now moving on to addition with single digits while continuing to master the value of numbers 10-20 and my son is just beginning to identify numbers. Even though they’ve become a resource we use every day, these cards inherently have an heirloom quality to them and I am teaching my children to treat them with great care--I want to save (and use) them for as long as possible!
Naturally, when Painted and Pine released the latest set of cards, SHAPES, I had to have it right away and it is easily my personal favorite. What a beautiful concept: teach a child the shape of a circle by relating it to the Earth… or the shape of a star by associating it with a starfish. Stunning artwork, gorgeous colors, practical lessons all in one. The options are endless and if you present preschoolers with these cards, you will surely see their imaginations unravel with creative ways to explore their uses on their own-- they are that inspiring.
Next up on our list: the memory game. We haven’t quite mastered the concept of Memory (as a card game) just yet here in our home, but I plan to use these nature based, animal cards as a way to ease into it!
I love supporting artists who use their calling to spread love and learning with littles; if you, too, like to shop small and incorporate pure goodness into your home learning and play experiences, I encourage you to check out Painted and Pine.
