Summer Art Night

On Wednesday, I hosted a Summer Art Night for the kids at church. We did four different projects, and I focused on messy projects that the kids probably wouldn't be allowed to do inside during the middle of winter.

This event was designed for toddlers on up. A few of the kids there are heading into sixth grade next week, so we really had a wide age span. But the great thing about these projects is that they're focused on the process, not the product, so all the kids were able to get into them and enjoy them.

Here's what we did:

1) I mixed bubble solution with food coloring. The kids blew the colored bubbles toward their paper with bubble wands. Some bubbles landed on the paper and left big colored circles on the paper; others popped in the air and rained down splashes of color onto the paper.

2) The kids rubber-banded sponges to the bottom of their feet. They stepped on trays of paint, then walked on paper to create a stamped design.

3) The kids drew pictures on the shiny side of freezer paper with washable markers. Then, they hung them on the clothesline and misted them with a spray bottle of water. Depending how much you spray, the ink can either bead up or drip down the paper.

4) We hung sheets on the clothesline and got them good and wet with the hose. Then, the kids got to use a variety of brushes (bristle brushes, sponge brushes, and sponge rollers) to paint on the sheets with washable tempera paints. (Supposedly, you can spray the sheets back down and start over when you're done, but we didn't try that, because it was time to eat a snack and head home.)

I didn't get as many pictures of Landon as I would have liked, because I was busy coordinating the much larger than I'd expected crowd, but here are the ones I did take.