Rock Painting & Mushroom Sticks

Emma Payne
Mar 9
3 min read

Updated: Mar 23

Duration: 30-45 minutes

Difficulty Level: Easy

When I arrived to the facility, the residents wanting to participate in todays activity were already in our activity room. We had one other resident join us later on, making a total of five residents. This activity included two separate crafts meant to decorate gardens, raised beds, potted plants, or flower beds. The residents always enjoy using their creativity when we do craft centered activities and thought the mushrooms were very cute. It was great to see the residents come up with ideas for their rocks that I hadn't thought of!

Understanding Why

While this activity is not directly planting or potting, what we are creating through this craft is to provide a more vibrant and exciting garden space. I explained to the residents that they will be able to place the mushroom sticks in their amaryllis pots if they choose so. Soon I will be constructing raised beds for the facility, so they will also have the opportunity to put the rocks and mushrooms in new raised beds.

Step By Step Process

Pre-activity preparation

In order to collect material for this activity, I purchased acorn tops and smooth river rocks from Amazon. Rather than ordering sticks, I went outside and looked for some that would be the right size and already on the ground. This was important to consider as fallen sticks will be dry and easy to break into smaller pieces. From past experience with my residents, I knew that they would not want to use the hot glue gun and prefer I complete that part of the activity for them. In the time leading up to the activity, I broke the sticks into smaller pieces and hot glued the acorn tops to them to create a mushroom shape.

Show example and explain purpose of activity

I passed around my example mushroom stick so that residents could see what we would be making. I explained where the rocks and mushrooms sticks are meant to go and that they will be able to decorate their amaryllis pots and the raised beds with what we make.

Choose your rocks and sticks

We only had 5 residents participate in this activity so each resident was able to choose several mushroom sticks and rocks to paint.

Paint!

The residents had various colors to choose from for painting. Some chose to paint shamrocks since St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner, others painted flowers, a river, and a rainbow. One of the residents had the idea to use glue and create a design on the rocks, then sprinkle glitter over the glue. This was a great idea and she was able to making a shining star on one of her rocks! They all incorporated nature on their rocks without any prompting! For the mushroom sticks, some chose to paint the sticks as well as the acorns.

Key Benefits of this Activity

Cognition: For older adults, cognitive resilience and memory recall are two areas of concern, but participating in activities that directly include nature can support these areas (The Woodlands, 2025).

Physical/Physiological: Any form of crafting provides the opportunity for using fine motor skill, honing hand-eye coordination, and improving finger dexterity in order to manipulate the material and paintbrushes (McGowan, 2023). Gentle activities such as this support an individual's balance, cardiovascular health, flexibility, and maintenance of balance (The Woodlands, 2025).

Psychological/Emotional: Using nature in crafts also can be an outlet for expressing feelings and emotions, which in turn has been found to reduce anxiety, stress, and restlessness (McGowan, 2023). A study by Sia et al. (2020), found that older adults who complete nature-based activities had decreased depression and anxiety after participating for several weeks.

Sensory: Both sticks, acorns, and rocks are all pieces of nature that offer a hands-on, sensory stimulating experience. Residents are able to touch and feel the different textures, colors, and shapes that they could find outside (McGowan, 2023).

Social: Any opportunity for social engagement can decrease the chance for older adults to isolate or to become depressed (The Woodlands, 2025). Combining both the positive results of nature-based activities and social connections can provide connected living for older adults (The Woodlands, 2025). This activity provided plenty of opportunities for the residents to converse and have lively discussions.

Resident comments:

"Well isn't that adorable!"

"I'm going to make two for my amaryllis flower."

"I tried to make the rock look like a river flowing with plants that grow around it."

Conclusion

This activity was fun to do with the residents and allowed for time to converse and get to know a little bit more about each other. We discussed their amaryllis bulbs and succulents, as well as the raised beds I will be bringing in later this month. Everyone enjoyed making their little mushroom decorations and getting creative painting their rocks. I look forward to our next activity!