10 Fun Art Activities

Try these creative activities at home.

Materials needed for the following lessons: tempera paints, watercolors, brushes, markers, crayons, kitchen items, glue, scissors, paper, miscellaneous items

• Make a splatter painting. Using watercolors and a toothbrush, splatter paint on white paper. Fill the toothbrush with paint, run your thumb along the bristles to spatter the paint. Cut into pieces. Assemble on black paper. Glue in place. This can be messy so make sure that you use washable paints and cover up with an apron.
• Create a nature collage. Spend some time outside collecting small nature items: sticks, petals, leaves, feathers, etc. Glue or stick on a paper. You can also place a piece of sticky contact paper in a frame, sticky side up. Then place items on the sticky side.
• Make a collage box. Use an old shoebox. Color the box with markers. Glue on some favorite things. Collect items that can be used in art projects: paper scraps, meat trays, packing stuff, pictures, etc.
• Paint thumbprint picture. Use watercolors. Prime the paints by placing a bead of water on each color. Stick your thumb in a watercolor pan. Make a thumbprint on the paper. When it is dry, add lines to make it a person, bug, or something imaginative.
• Print with kitchen items. Using tempera paint, pour some paint on a paper plate or cookie tray. Pick some kitchen items to print with: cookie cutters, corks, spaghetti, mallets, etc.
• Make tracks. Using tempera paint, pour some paint on a paper plate. Take small trucks and cars and run them through the paint. Then make tracks on the paper. It's fun to fill a bucket with soapy water and have a car wash when done painting.
• Pan art. Place a piece of paper in a cookie pan. Paint the paper with water. Using a very wet brush, dip in a watercolor color. Dab the paint on the paper. What does it do? When the child has filled the paper with color, have him sprinkle salt on the paper and leave to dry. Once it's dry, brush off the salt and talk about what happened.
• Connect the dots. Using the end opposite the bristles on a paintbrush, dip in tempera paint and make dots around the paper. Then use paints or markers to draw lines to connect the dots. Add color in the spaces.
• Timed line wonder. Turn on your kitchen timer to one minute. Using a marker, begin drawing but don't pick up your marker. Make one long continuous line going up, down, across and around. When the timer goes off, color in the spaces.
• Nature stamps. Collect some nature items that have a flat side (twigs, leaves, rocks, etc.). Paint the items with tempera paint and stamp them on paper.