Do the words “preschooler” and “paint” scare you?
Are you constantly trying to think of new art activities for preschoolers?
Well, I have a new resource that will take the fear out of painting and make creating art with young children super easy. More on that in a second but first….
If you work with small children or have young children of your own you know they love their birthdays!
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My five-year-old loves to plan her own party. The day after her birthday she already is thinking of ideas for the next birthday.
So it was really no surprise that when I let her pick an activity from Barbara Rucci’s new book, Art Workshop for Children that M-Woww chose to create a birthday cake!
Barbara Rucci is the talented art instructor behind the colorful blog, Art Bar. Her new book, Art Workshop for Children: How to Foster Original Thinking with More Than 25 Process Art Experiences, is a beautiful book full of inspiration on how to get started or incorporate more child-led process art experiences or what we like to call process art.
What is process art?
If you don’t know where or how to begin with process art, Art Workshop for Children is the resource for you.
The book walks you through how to set up an art space (even if you don’t have much space) and you will learn what supplies and materials to stock in your art space.
If you are a parent looking to incorporate more art at home or a busy teacher that wants to have more child-led art experiences in the classroom this book makes it easy, even if you are not an art teacher.
To show how easy it is to get started with process art activities for preschoolers, we are sharing how we created a birthday cake inspired by Art Workshop for Children.
As I said earlier, I let my five-year-old artist, M-Woww decide which project we would try first from the book. It was not a surprise she picked the birthday cake and once my two-year-old heard the word “cake” she quickly joined in on the creative action.
Materials: 3 different size cardboard boxes, paint, brushes, glue
Optional: beads or sequins, pom-poms, play dough, ribbon, glitter glue
Step 1: Layout and arrange your boxes. We discussed the different size of the boxes and experimented with the best way to stack the boxes to create a cake shape.
Step 2: Glue the boxes together.
Step 3: Paint your boxes. We used washable tempera paint to make clean up easy.
Step 4: Accessorize your cake! We glued pom-poms, glitter paper and sequins to the cake. Both artists loved using the glitter glue to add more cake details.
Step 5: Don’t forget your candles! In the book, Barabara shows a great technique to roll the paper to make the candels but since I had a two year old also helping with the cake we decided to make play dough candles.
I love this view looking down on top of the cake! So much coloful design!
The best part about child-led process art is there is no wrong way to create! Each child gets a chance to voice their authentic self and build their own creative thinking skills.
Open-ened art experiences give children opportunities to explore, discover and experiment! To check out more art experiences click over to see more about Barbara Rucci’s book, Art Workshop for Children.
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