Art Time - Playing with Cars

This is by far M's favorite art activity. This is what he usually wants to do. I have to talk him into trying other things. It's a lot of fun, and we have a ton of paintings hanging around our home with tire tracks all over them. :)

We buy big rolls of freezer paper at the grocery store and use this for most of our art projects. The shiny side is great for fingerpainting (or anything else except watercolors), and the matte side is great for watercolors. It's much less expensive than craft paper rolls.

Tape a large piece of paper to your work surface. Let your child gather a few small cars, or anything with wheels; ones with some kind of tread make the best tracks, but the smooth ones are fun too.

We use a muffin tin with applesauce cups stuck inside for our paint tray. Grab the paint brushes and "plop" some paint on the paper. Here M is making "puddles":

Take the cars and run them through the paint.

Put more paint down, grab another car, run it through. Your little one will catch the hang of this very quickly, believe me.

In the end you have a pretty painting like this:

Then, more fun! Stick your child at the kitchen sink full of soapy water and let him wash all the cars, paintbrushes, etc. while you sit back and relax. Yes, it's messy. Yes, you'll probably end up really washing the cars and paintbrushes. Yes, water might get everywhere. Put a towel on the chair, on the floor, and anywhere else you want and let them explore and have fun. The plus side is a little mess = a lot of time entertaining themselves while you relax, fold the laundry, whatever. :)

Enjoy your messy art time! And have a beautiful day! :)

Setting up an Open-ended Art Area

I recently read a great post about open-ended art here. And setting up an area for M to create whatever he wants has been on my mind a lot lately. He's been painting and gluing since he was able to sit up by himself, so I'm not too worried about him making messes (and in the kitchen or outside the mess is pretty easy to clean up) but I'm not sure how to put it all together in our tiny home, or what should be included.

Right now he was a lap tray that we call his "desk" in a corner of the living room. Here he has a sketch pad of plain white paper, some coloring books (recent additions since he just started being interested in them), a bucket of crayons and colored pencils, some construction paper scraps, scissors, a glue stick, and a small container of the pieces he's cut up from the construction paper, as well as some stickers. He did make some collages at first, but he is not a big fan of the glue stick. He is a glue bottle kind of guy. Squeezing the glue is a huge part of the fun for him. Obviously that can't be done in the living room, or I might turn into the crazy-mama-who-yells. ;)

In the kitchen he has an art easel with a drawer. One side has a white board. We normally keep peices of newsprint up on that side, held in place with magnets. His markers are here, more stickers, chalk for the chalkboard on the other side, and more magnets. He makes several drawings here daily.


When he paints it's usually outside on his homemade easel, or inside at the table, doing something I've set up for him - open-ended or crafty. However, I like the idea of him being able to do it on his own whenever he wants. *But* I like the set up we have now because it works for us. So, I'm going to try having a container of other supplies - more paper, glue (in a bottle), less-messy paints like his do-a-dot painters and roll-on painters, tissue paper, scissors, etc. Having it in a container means I can set it out in the morning and he can do what he wants with it, then I can take it off at dinner time or whenever we don't want it out. I plan on trying this some time soon, hopefully one day this week if I can get myself organized in time.


I'd love to hear from anyone who has other suggestions for what to keep in our art container. Am I adding too much? Should I rotate items in some way? Do you have a place in your home where your children can create whenever they want? How is it set up in your home? Have you posted on your blog about this topic? If so, leave the link in the comments section - I'd love to read them!


We will still try to do (almost) daily art projects and may take part, once in a while, in this "open-ended art carnival" that a reader introduced me to.

Have a beautiful day! :)