Bubble Wrap Print Making

We placed some paint and bubble wrap at the art center and invited the children to explore making prints. 

The children painted the bumpy side of the wrap. 

And stamped it on the paper. 

The result was a beautiful mixture of colours and prints. 

Recycled Styrofoam Stamps

I love discovering the unconventional beauty in found objects - I am constantly looking into our recycle bin and thinking about how we can use everyday materials in creative ways. The kids have been very interested in stamps lately and so I thought we could recycle some styrofoam trays we had from produce into our own handmade stamps (why do cucumbers need to be packed on styrofoam trays anyway?!?!).

This activity was so easy! We used a metal skewer to carve an image into a square of styrofoam. My daughter visualized what she wanted her design to look like, but it would be easy to have children preplan their stamp by sketching it on a piece of paper first.

Next she affixed the stamp to a large foam block (with some tape) so that it had a base that could easily be grasped.

She gently stamped her paper after wetting the stamp with an ink pad and....voila! Her own unique, recycled stamp!

My daughter spent much time creating many new designs and testing them out on her papers. Next I'm going to encourage her to use her new stamps to design stationary that can be used to write letters to her friends and family!

Contained Finger Painting

Providing opportunities for children to explore materials like paint with their hands/fingers is an important developmental experience. It encourages fine motor strengthening and control, creative expression, and early experiences with mark making. When children are encouraged to make marks with different materials, they develop experience and interest in pre-writing behaviours - realizing that they have the ability to permanently record something tangible that can be observed, discussed, and interpreted by others. This behaviour is an important milestone for children who are learning to write. Early marks will eventually turn into drawings and as children share the 'story' behind each drawing, they will come to understand that these pictures can also be explained in oral and written words. (Schickendanz, J.A. & Collins, M.F. (2013). So much more than the ABCs: The early phases of reading and writing. National Association for the Education of Young Children)

I love to encourage children to draw and finger print in paint but know that many people are reluctant to encourage this due to the extreme messiness that is natural with the activity.  In order to contain the paint and still encourage free exploration, we used our portable water table as the canvas for our work.

Caleb selected some complimentary colours of washable paint (anything else will be much harder to clean) to use in the bin.

At first he was interested in using various painting tools to explore the paint.

I encouraged him to use all the space in the bin, including the inside walls.

Of course any kind of paint with young children will often turn to finger painting and because I wasn't worried about the messiness of this activity, I encouraged him to explore painting his hands with the various brushes.

Even though the paint was repeatedly swirled together, the complimentary colours blended into a beautiful shade of aqua green and was still appealing to use.

The paint was cool and felt so smooth and Caleb spent a long time exploring it.

This activity was fun and so easy to do! An easy way to save any pictures or printing done in the paint is to lightly press a piece of large paper against it and make a print of the work. This way children's experiences can still be saved for classroom display or portfolio use.

When we were done we simply washed the bin out in our tub. Any large water/tactile table would work well for including many children at once. Smaller bins could also be placed together on a table top with many different colour combinations.

Holiday Inspired Stamping

Why buy holiday wrapping paper when you can make your own? We used star cookie cutters and acrylic paints from the local dollar store. It was so easy to do and gave the kids another way to help out when preparing things for the upcoming holiday season!

Autumn Stamping

Mini cookie cutters are such an easy way to encourage children to explore print making! We used some small leaf cutters that I picked up at a local craft store over the weekend. Because print making doesn't use a lot of paint, we separated small amounts by placing it in a muffin tin.

Cookie cutters are easy for little fingers to grasp and make beautiful prints on paper.

We're going to use our finished art to make autumn cards to send to our relatives. You can also stamp plain paper gift bags in order to encourage your child to gift his/her art making to others!

Updating a Fall Favourite

Stamping with apples is a fall time favourite activity. It's interesting to cut an apple in half and discuss the star design that the seeds make. 

Stamping with the apple halves is an easy way to discuss how we can make prints using different colours and movements.

Many action words can be used to describe the stamping - jabbing, pressing, gliding, smearing, printing, and dabbing were a few of the ones we used in conversation while making our art.

We decided to use our light table to enhance the apple print experience. After covering the surface with a clear garbage bag, the kids used the same apples and paint and explored on the table.

They noticed that the light shone through the prints because of the transparency of the clear bag.

The result was a beautiful collection of apple prints that were easily cleaned up once we were finished exploring!

Square Prints

It's amazing how such simple materials can be used by our very creative children to create some amazing, unique pieces of art work!  We used stacking squares as print makers this past week with paint.

Some children patterned with them...

Some children stamped and then smeared the squares, and then stamped again on top. The paper we used retained the original colours so that a layered look could be achieved.

Some made geometric prints...

Smeared art work...

Folded symmetrical art work..

Beautiful background with geometric print on top...

Gorgeous!