Art Activities Ideas for Kids

For kids, art has several advantages: it promotes self-expression, enhances motor skills, fosters patience and problem-solving skills, and improves concentration. Kids' self-esteem is also increased when they accomplish an individual task. Best of all, kids have lots of fun in the process!

 

These kid-friendly painting activities can keep your children occupied and promote their creativity. Better still, you probably already have the majority of the necessary materials at home. Therefore, no extra spending is necessary.

 

Check out our list of 10 enjoyable, simple art projects for kids, such as watercolour paintings, craft stick projects, easy stamped art, and more to inspire creativity and artistic expression:

 

1. The Big Reveal

You'll need watercolour paper, watercolour paints, painter's tape, a paintbrush, crayons, and stickers for this simple painting project for kids.

 

Encourage your child to paint the watercolour paper with crayons and/or stickers after taping it to a flat surface (such as a table covered in newspaper). They can then use watercolours to cover the entire sheet of paper. The tape and stickers should be gently removed once it has dried. These things will leave the paper with brilliant white patterns! Additionally, the crayons will repel the watercolour, leaving ‘negative space’ that cannot be painted on.

 

2. Natural Collage

To begin, print out a full-body photograph of your child (for reference, ours is 8.5 inches by 11 inches). Then go outside and collect "natural art resources" from the environment, such as leaves, twigs, flowers, and bark. Create a special collage to put in your home by adhering the items to the picture when you get home.

 

3. Coffee Filter Art

A coffee filter is perfect for this art project of its translucency. After cutting the filter's edges unevenly, add lines and spots to it with non-permanent markers. Spray starch on the coffee filter, place it on top of a yoghurt container or plastic cup and watch the colours blend. Stop and let the coffee filter dry once it has become saturated. Once the coffee filter has dried, you can choose to create an origami butterfly or other origami artwork with it!

 

4. Handmade Tiles

For this kid-friendly art and craft project, all you need is the sun and a few simple supplies, including a sheet tray, a rolling pin, acrylic paint, paintbrushes, and 350ml/g each of water, flour, and salt. The tile can be embellished with small objects, rubber stamps, and cookie cutters of any shape.

 

Start by combining the flour, salt, and water in a bowl and kneading the mixture for two minutes. Roll a ball of dough into a square form on a countertop that has been lightly dusted; this will serve as your tile. With your cookie cutter, rubber stamp, or other objects, make impressions in the soft dough (for example, a silk flower). Use a pencil to add details. 

 

Place the tile on the sheet tray in direct sunlight as soon as you're satisfied. Before flipping it over to dry the bottom, wait a few hours and check on it occasionally for changes in the dough. Acrylic paint is used to colour the dry tile. (Note: The dough recipe yields numerous tiles, so feel free to experiment with various designs.)

 

5. Kaleidoscope Collage

Take out some poster board or a sizable canvas, and get ready to create this colourful kaleidoscope! First, combine 120ml of craft glue with 60ml of water. Brush some of the mixtures onto the poster after your youngster has drawn a sizable shape (such as a circle or square) on it.

 

Squares of tissue paper are placed on the wet board, additional glue is applied, and the procedure is repeated until the shape is covered. We advise finishing this project outside on a flat surface to avoid messy dripping (just watch for the wind!).

 

6. 3-D Portrait

This simple kid-friendly art exercise is improved by 3-D features! On a piece of card stock, cardboard, or the front of a cereal box, doodle a straightforward picture. Finally, crepe paper scraps are balled up and sticky glue is used to attach them to the canvas.

 

7. Pastel Scribbles

Looking for a toddler art project? This abstract work of art really might work! Collect one sheet of white paper, watercolour and oil pastel paints, tape, paintbrushes, and water.

 

Have your child use oil pastels to cover the paper in drawings after taping it to a surface. The paper can then be painted with watercolour paint that has been diluted. The paint will easily show through the pastels!

 

8. Salt Watercolour

Who would have thought making such lovely artwork with your kid could be so simple? Simply paint the paper with watercolours, then immediately sprinkle on coarse salt. Remove any extra salt when the paper has dried, and then admire your lovely, ethereal design! The paper can be used to wrap flowers, presents, storage containers, and or framed to decorate your wall.

 

9. Clothespin Airplane

Another fun and artsy craft to try with your kids is the clothespin airplane. For this project, you will need coloured crafts sticks, large wooden clothespins, glue dots, white craft glue and a pair of scissors.

 

The wings are made from full-sized craft sticks, but the tail wing is made from a half-sized craft stick. After splitting a craft stick in half, trim the rounded end. To make the vertical tail, cut off one side of the rounded end (see image above). From a single craft stick, you can create two tail wings.

 

If you've never used glue dots before, they might appear complicated, but they're actually rather simple. The secret is to avoid attempting to remove the dot's plastic backing. Put the glue dot that is still attached to the plastic backing onto the surface you want it to adhere to (in this case, the craft stick for the wing).

 

Lift after pressing. The glue dot will remain on your surface even after the plastic backing has peeled off. Put the craft stick on top of the clothespin, glue dot side down. Repetition is required for the second wing on the clothespin's base. If you choose, you can use only two sticks, or as many as four.

 

You might have noticed that the wing is a touch shaky at this stage. This might not be a problem if your clothespin has a flat surface, but with the larger plastic pins, their surfaces could not be quite flat. Later, we'll glue them in place. The important thing is that we are letting our kids put this plane together without much help and without waiting.

 

The horizontal tail wing should be glued to the back of the clothespin using a glue dot. The vertical tail wing's flat edge should be pressed into the glue dot, pulled off the plastic backing, and then pressed onto the horizontal tail wing.

 

This clothespin project is now finished! If necessary, you can extend the lifespan of any or all of the craft sticks by adding white glue to them.

 

10. Mosaic Artwork

Your child's bedroom wall will look fantastic with the mosaic art! Draw a basic landscape in a rough outline on a sheet of card stock. To finish the artwork, have your kid tear colours from magazine pages or scraps of paper and glue them to the card material. To prevent the mosaic pieces from falling off the finished product, you can also choose to laminate it.

 

Conclusion

Make arts and crafts projects fun and interactive for your kids! Kids require constant stimuli to spur creativity and imagination – there’s no better way to do this other than by experimenting with arts and crafts projects that are easy to do and pretty to be used as house decorations. Interested to sign your child up for an art class? Register for our classes here!