As my mom used to say, “A good time was had by all!”

Here’s a super fun, active, & collaborative art project for toddlers & preschool age kids:   giant marble painting!  It’s a great way for kids to improve their fine and gross motor skills as well as their coordination!  It looks easy, but it’s pretty tricky getting those big slippery marbles and balls dipped into the paint and then into the container without using their hands/fingers.  And then once they start rolling them around, the trick is trying to keep them IN the container!  Kids learn to work as a team and improve their hand-eye coordination along the way!  And they end up with some pretty snazzy marble prints to boot!

The pictures are pretty self-explanatory so it hardly seems to require a tutorial, but here goes:

You Need:

• Plastic tongs, one for each child.  Have we mentioned how much we love tongs!!!  These $.99 kitchen gadgets are such a great way for children as young as 18m to improve their fine motor skills!  (Tip: keep repositioning them in their hand so that they are holding them with their hand straight out as if holding a cup, vs. twisting their arm around so their hand is upside down.  It’s hard to explain, but you’ll see what we mean – 99% of kids seem to want to do that when they first pick them up, we’re not sure why!  But in our experience, they build up muscle memory quicker and have a better grip & leverage if they can learn how to hold them with their hand positioned as if holding a cup, fairly low towards the bottom of the handles.)
• A large, shallow container.  You could use a box or large plastic storage container like we used.
• An assortment of medium sized balls and large marbles.  The balls have to be small enough for the kids to pick them up with the tongs.
• A few bowls of brightly colored tempera paint.  We use sparkle tempera paint for a little added pizzazz!  Tip:  try to give them colors that “get along” well when blended, such as red/blue, yellow/red, yellow/blue, pink/orange, etc.  Orange & purple make brown.  Maybe you want brown…
• Several large sheets of medium weight paper, cut to fit the inside the container.

How to Do It:

• Lay a large sheet of paper in the bottom of the container.
• Demonstrate to the kids how to pick up their balls & marbles with the tongs and drop them in the bowl of paint.  Explain that the rules of this game are that they have to hold the tongs properly, and…. “NO FINGERS”!
• Swish the balls around in the bowl a bit to coat them with paint, then use the tongs to pick them up and drop them in the container.
• Each child picks up a side of the container and practices “sending” the balls to their partner, back & forth, side to side, etc.  Encourage them to move & have fun!  See if they can come up with fun ways using movement to make the balls create a pattern with the lines of paint.  Invent a fun dance!  Sing!  Experiment!  What happens when you try to bounce the balls up and down?
• Once the kids get enough paint “tracks” on their paper to their liking, remove it and hang it to dry, and replace it with another sheet!

There was no original source cited on Pinterest and it took a lot of digging, but we finally found the original artist who created these amazing illustrations!  His name is Colin Thompson, an author and illustrator, and these drawings are from a book called How to Live Forever.

We were excited to inspire our 9-14 yr. old classes by Colin Thompson’s artwork!  In this watercolor pencil drawing lesson, students were challenged to draw their own fantasy bookshelves, referencing either their favorite books or ones that they read most recently.  They were challenged to be very detailed and draw in miniature, incorporating characters and scenes from the books as well as architectural and outdoor elements, literally creating an entire little whimsical world on a shelf.  The kids had such a fun time working on these and they turned out amazing!  It really stimulated their imaginations!  At one point, I overheard them talking amongst themselves and someone posed the question, “What if WE are just tiny little characters on someone’s giant bookshelf?!”   hmmmmm

“Ta – Da!”

While we have yet to find a worthwhile art project involving pepper (anyone? Buehler?), salt painting on the other hand is a super fun art project for kids of all ages!  We usually structure a salt painting lesson around a famous artist or a specific drawing technique such as a continuous line contour drawing.  It’s also a great way for younger children to learn about primary and secondary colors, and to experiment with color mixing.  An added point of interest is that it’s also “part science” in that, while the salt and glue mixture is wet, the salt helps “transport” and blend the adjacent colors with one another, and as the painting dries over the next few days, the chemicals in the salt tend to separate the pigments in the watercolor.  The end result is a really colorful textured piece of artwork!

You Need:

1.  Heavy weight paper or poster board.  White is the best choice so that the vibrant paint colors show up really well.

2.  Pencil (optional)

3.  White school glue

4.  Table salt

5.  Shallow baking pan or plastic tub, slightly larger than the paper

6.  Liquid Watercolors

7.  Eye droppers or paint brushes

How to Do It:

1.  Draw a picture with a pencil.  Our project was a self-portrait inspired by Picasso.  The picture should be rather large and include a lot of connected lines.

2.  Trace the pencil lines with the glue, starting at the top of the paper to avoid dragging arms and elbows through the glue.

3.  Lay the glue-y paper in a shallow tub or baking pan, and generously sprinkle salt all over the picture.  The glue lines should be completely saturated with salt, giving a raised, rough appearance.

4.  Using the eye droppers and liquid watercolor and hovering approximately 1″ above the paper, carefully drop one drop of paint at a time onto the salt/glue lines and watch it “travel” along the line. You can also do this with a paint brush by gently touching the brush to the glue (this technique is a lot harder to control and the brush obviously get’s covered in glue and salt).

At this point, it’s beneficial to discuss the definition of primary and secondary colors and encourage them to plan the colors that they want to touch each other.  Where the colors touch, they will slowly blend to form the new or secondary color.

5.  Allow to dry flat for approximately two days and then scrape off the excess salt outside or over a garbage can.

 You Need:

1.  Empty oatmeal containers + lids.  Make sure the lids are tight or this will turn into an exploding kind of game that you probably don’t want!

2.  Rectangular sized paper cut to fit inside the oatmeal container

3.  Marbles and/or small round balls

4.  Nubby bits of old crayons or oil pastels

5.  Salad tongs (found in the kitchen aisle at Walmart or Target.  Last time we stocked up on these at Walmart they were $.99!).  We love tongs!  If you have a “sorter” or a child who loves to organize, these are really fun for them and the paint is totally not necessary – just give them a few bowls of challenging objects they can try to pick up and move from one bowl to the other or sort in some way and sit back and watch them enjoy just playing with them.

6.  Washable tempera paint.  We use glitter tempera paint for a little extra sparkle!

7.  Several small bowls

How to Do It:

1.  Place a piece of paper around the inside of the oatmeal container.

2.  Explain that the rules of this project (“game”) are that they have to use their tongs – no fingers!

2.  Demonstrate how to hold the tongs with their hand straight out and positioned as if they are holding a cup (rather than twisting their arm and turning their hand upside down… no idea why kids do this but it seems to be a universal approach to picking up these sorts of things).  They will have better strength, better luck grabbing & releasing the balls & marbles, and will build muscle memory faster if you initially keep correcting & repositioning their grip on the tongs.  Also make sure they are gripping them low on the handle. If the handles are two wide apart for their little fingers, you can squeeze them and bend them to be a little closer together.

3.  Using the tongs, drop the marbles into a small bowl of tempera paint to coat them.  Pick them back up with the tongs and drop them into the oatmeal container.

4.  Still using the tongs (no fingers!) grab some nubby bits of old crayons or oil pastels and drop them into the container.

5.  Secure the lid tightly (use a little masking tape if it’s not completely tight), and shake, rattle & roll!  Make up some fun dance moves with your kids!  Roll it across the floor to each other.  Shake it high, shake it low, shake it to side….

6.  Gather around the container and whispering to build suspense and drama, gently lift the lid of the container and pull the paper out to reveal a colorful be-speckled surprise!   Hang or lay flat to dry.

Voila!

Psychologically, it is natural for children to subconsciously try to squeeze everything within the space available, so a little tip when teaching them how to draw the flower super zoomed-in and close-up is to instruct them to draw the flower petals off the paper and literally onto the table.   If we are painting Georgia O’Keefes on the wall, we even let them draw the petals on the wall!  That is such a fun idea to them that they actually remember to do it!

We love to tout the virtues of ordinary household contact paper as an art medium for toddlers (available at any home goods store, with the shelf liner).  The possibilities for clean, sticky fun are endless!

In our toddler classes this week, we set up a giant “Sticky Face” wall, along with an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of colorful & interesting do-dads that the kids could stick on the faces for facial features.  ~ Bottle caps, buttons, pom poms, random construction paper body parts (a sticky face isn’t complete without a single hand or foot protruding from it, now is it?), squiggly mouths, teeth, mustaches, yarn & crinkle paper for hair, etc.  You get the picture.

Inspired by one of the most addicting iPad apps you will ever download, Faces iMake, this is a creative “treasure hunt” project that gets the little ones on their feet and moving, while helping them learn their colors & shapes and expand their vocabulary.  ”Hey!  This guy needs an ear!  Can you go find a YELLOW FEATHER?”    ”What?!  This crazy lady needs a fancy earring for that big ear, can you go find something SHINY?”

I won’t lie – contact paper has a mind of it’s own, and peeling off the backing and taping up two 15′ long rows on a wall sticky side up felt something like wrestling an anaconda.  Let’s just say it’s probably not a job that you want to do when small children are within earshot.

Another cool thing about this project is that most of the stuff you stick on the contact paper easily peels off (which is kind of a fun project in and of itself), so you can re-use it over again!

George Rodrigue is one of our favorite artists!  I have to honestly say there has not been a single sopping wet blue dog painting that has ever been schlepped out out of this studio that I didn’t fall madly in love with and want to personally take home!  We paint “blue dogs” with students as young as four, which, truth be told, are usually my favorites!  Sometimes they look like Scooby Doo, sometimes their heads aren’t attached to their bodies, and sometimes they have Dumbo ears and a single leg protruding out of the side of their head, but they are all beautiful in their own special way!

Depending on the age of the class, we often inspire the kids by reading Why is Blue Dog Blue, a gift from one of our favorite students, or excerpts from Blue Dog Man.

We love to draw & paint super large blue dogs on the wall with tempera paint, or small acrylic paintings (this makes a great project for a value study – just let them decide what color they want their dog to be, then give them a dot of white and black paint and let them mix the different shades of that color). We’ve also done a really fun (albeit very challenging) papier mache blue dog!  I seem to recall more than one of them hobbling out of here on only three legs.

So why is blue dog blue?  Hmmm…well, as you can see blue dog isn’t aaaallllways blue….