Turning Children's Art into Holiday Gift Wrap

In our classroom we focus mainly on process-based art. Children are invited to create with open-ended materials. A painting experience that children enjoy involves stamping holiday cookie cutters using festive acrylic paint.

 

When the paintings are dry they are rolled and tied using a sparkly pipe cleaner. A tag is attached inviting families to repurpose the art as holiday gift wrap for a special loved one. A copy of the letter is available for printing here: Gift Wrap Art Letter to Families

 

Doesn't this present look so beautiful with the special wrap? 

Outdoor Finger Painting

Today we found another use for our acrylic outdoor easel! I love to encourage the children to finger paint but sometimes it can get so messy. Instead of using a flat paper surface, we dribbled finger paint on our outdoor acrylic easel.

The paint was thick enough to stay on the acrylic, giving Caleb an interesting surface to paint on. Usually finger painting is done on a horizontal surface, and he seemed to appreciate the challenge of experiencing it done vertically instead!

The sunlight shone through the paint and illuminated it, much like when one finger paints on a light table. It reminded us of beautiful stained glass.

Clean up was easy! We just sprayed it with the hose. Don't have an outdoor acrylic easel? What about trying this on windows? (maybe perform a spot check first...just in case!)

Outdoor Easel

In my quest to enrich our outdoor space, my husband attached a large piece of clear acrylic to our outdoor climber. The acrylic is large enough to fit two children and our hope installing it under the climber is that the children will be inspired to engage in outdoor literacy and art activities.

The clear nature of the acrylic itself is inviting because it allows the light to shine through and provides an interesting background for drawing, painting, and writing that differs from the traditional indoor painting easel. 

The first activity we invited the children to do was draw on the acrylic with Crayola 'window writers' (markers, crayons) that act like dry erase materials and are easily cleaned off a clear surface.

There was much excitement to do this and they worked together to explore the materials. The acrylic is attached just underneath the climber in a space that often isn't used - I'm hopeful that it might act as a prop to encourage further play here...

Erasing was easy...just a few swipes of a dry cloth!



I'm envisioning the amazing possibilities with this new play feature - it will be easy to affix a piece of paper to the acrylic to encourage more drawing, writing, and even painting outdoors!