Painting

Salt Painting Easter Egg Art

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April 1, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

Salt painting is such a fabulous process art activity. I love it on these fun patterned Easter eggs. Spring break was the perfect time to use the pastel liquid watercolors and my whole crew of 8 ages 2-8 years enjoyed the same project. Salt Painting Easter Egg Art creates lovely Easter themed art and incorporates some cool science and fine motor skills.

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Salt Painting Easter Egg Art

For this activity you will need:

Directions:

Create an egg design with glue.
Sprinkle with salt.
Allow to dry.
Using pipettes, drip liquid watercolors on the salt. Watch the salt absorb the paint.

Each child could design their own egg but some of my group is quite young. Also, prepping the activity saved us time.

Everyone’s design turned out awesome!

The colors dried lighter since we diluted the paints but they are beautiful.

If you haven’t tried salt painting yet, you must! Kids love it.

St. Patrick’s Day Pom Pom Painting

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February 5, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

Use a pom pom clipped to a clothespin to paint some fun St. Patrick’s Day Pom Pom Painting pages. I’ve found that some children will rub the paint and some will make spots. Either method will work great! The coloring pages shown are available for download at the bottom of the post.

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St. Patrick’s Day Pom Pom Painting

Supplies Needed:

Paper
Foam Plate
Green & Yellow Paint
Clothespins
Pom Poms
St. Patrick’s Day Printables, download below

Directions:

Clip a clothespin to a pom pom to create a fun painting tool.
Add a little paint to a foam plate.
Paint as desired.

Children love these types of painting activities and it’s a great process art experience.

Consider adding a little glitter paint to these. Glitter paint makes every holiday festive!

Pom Pom Painting Printable Patterns

Download the patterns below (PDF)

Shamrock Pattern Coin Pattern Horseshoe Pattern

More St. Patrick’s Day Ideas

Island Sunset Art

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July 4, 2017 by Stacy Leave a Comment

We’re finishing up our Alphabet Island theme for June, and I’m sad to see it end. It’s been a great theme for summer. During these warm months, we do a little less but we always do the art projects. The Island Sunset Art wowed me!

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Island Sunset Art

Where can you see a sunset? Sunsets are the most visible and so beautiful over the water. This is a great time to talk about reflection. The Mother Goose Time Daily Topic posters always include a question to prompt conversation.

What colors can you see in a sunset? So many colors blend together!

For this project, I offered a variety of liquid watercolors, a piece of white paper and a black crayon. Glitter was also included for this Invitation to Create but we forgot about it and didn’t end up using it. That’s okay, though, their art didn’t need it!

Drawing beautiful sunset looks and sounds overwhelming but it’s fairly easy! To prove this, I tried my hand at drawing the palm trees and scene myself (my drawing is not pictured) while describing my work and the children watched. I said, “The trees are just lines.” Everyone can draw lines. I explained that everything in the picture appears black or shaded in the sunset picture. It’s because of all the light and colors behind the trees.

After drawing the scene with black crayon, then we started to paint the sunset.

What happens when you paint over the crayon? The paint “resists” or doesn’t color over the crayon!

My group always enjoys mixing colors so that was definitely part of the process as well. What does red and yellow make? See the small sun going down in the painting below?

I was blown away by their fabulous drawing and painting. This work was done by 3-5 year olds, 100% their own work.

Day is Done Song/Fingerplay

Day is done,
Day is done.
(Reach arms above head.)
It was fun,
It was fun.
(Swing arms side-to-side overhead.)
The sun sets in the sky,
(Squat low.)
It waves to us goodbye.
(Wave.)
Day is done,
Day is done.
(Reach arms above head, then let them fall to the sides.)

Story Suggestion

The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola goes along beautifully with the sunset theme.
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More Alphabet Island

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Mess Free Painting with Kwik Stix

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November 5, 2016 by Stacy Leave a Comment

We are excited to get to try out the new Kwik Stix! I’ve been wanting to try them and was able to get some free samples to try out with my child care kids. I was really hoping they would be as great as they seem. Guess what? They are!

This post is sponsored by The Pencil Grip, Inc, Creators of Kwik Stix. All opinions are my own.

Don’t get me wrong, we love messy! We do lots of messy art like syringe painting or Starry Night Sensory Play but sometimes, less mess is very welcomed!

Since we are working recognizing our names and letters in our names, I printed out each child’s name in a large fillable font (kbsticktoit font)

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Mess Free Painting with Kwik Stix

Kwik Stix are solid tempera paint sticks. They certainly are easy to use! They’re a lot like a glue stick. The paint glides on very smoothly on paper and dries quickly, in 90 seconds!

Kwik Stix can be used on paper, wood, canvas, cardboard and many other types of crafts.

My kids, ages 2-5, really like them! They are getting good use. They have been awesome about putting the caps back on so they don’t dry out or get ruined. I have them trained well.

I haven’t had any problems with them twisting the stix way up or breaking them off. I explained that we don’t want to do that or they will be ruined.

The “shiny” ones, or the Metalix, are their favorites.

We always have our art cart out with blank paper for free time so the Quik Stix are getting lots of use during that time and they are creating wonderful designs!

Below are a few examples of the art and name coloring we’ve done with our new Quik Stix. The colors are very vibrant.

No stains on hands. Washes easily off the table. Dries smooth and bright. Awesome art material!

Kwik Sticks are new at Target. Now you can find Kwik Stix 6 packs of Basic and Metalix colors. If you want Kwik Stix 96 pack, 24 pack, 12 pack and 6 packs of Classics, neons, and Metalix are available at Target.com.

Kwik Stix would make great Christmas gifts too. Kids will love using them and parents will love that they are mess free!

Invitation to Create Apple Trees

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September 3, 2016 by Stacy 3 Comments

This year, our art with Mother Goose Time looks a little different. The art activities are still as wonderful in the past, perhaps even more so now because they are very open-ended and developmentally appropriate for young children. Come see how it looks and works with our invitation to create apple trees. This art is a part of the Me & My Family theme.

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At circle time, we already discussed our families. How many people are in your family? A family is like a tree. there are many connected people that all share the same family roots.

Invitation to Create Apple Trees

Each Invitation to Create includes one of these beautiful cards to inspire your activity set up. It lists the materials needed, the ones provided in the kit, your materials to gather and optional materials. It tells you how to set up the materials and prompts you can use with the children. Invitations to Create are very inviting! Use your imagination and find related materials you already have to add to the invitation.

Family Tree

The day we worked on our “Family Tree” art, I had 5 preschoolers participating. I set up a small area for two to work at a time. I set up another area for work with the family stamps to keep the groups small and manageable. It worked very well. The next day when we worked on our owl art, I set it up for everyone to do at once. I’ll share that next. So Invitations to Create are flexible. See what works for you. I’ve had to rethink art a bit but that’s a good thing!

Materials provided:

paint
brushes
glue
green leaf shapes (you could provide green paper so they can create their own leaves)
crayons
apple tree photo

Not pictured: Souffle cups, blue paper, brown paper strips

Prompts you could start with:

What do you notice about the tree? What do you think will happen to the apples in the tree?
How will use you the souffle cups in your art?
What might happen if you tear up the brown paper?

Everyone was quick to get started. They have used these types of materials many times so they jumped right in. I offered very little comment or direction. Everyone’s work was different. I could see choices being made and materials being used intentionally. I could see the thought going into their work.