Let your kids’ imaginations run wild with this Easy Art Activity for Kids: Blow Paint Monsters! With some paint and a simple drinking straw, toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergarteners can create endless varieties of colorful and whimsical creatures!
Hey, friends! With all 3 of my kids at home for the summer, I’ve had to get a little bit more creative with the ways that I keep them busy. But that doesn’t mean that we’re getting complicated — I only do EASY!
I have the added challenge of finding activities that each of my boys (ages 2-6) can handle and enjoy. That means that any art project that we do should be pretty basic and customizable…allowing plenty of room for elaboration and creativity! These Blow Paint Monsters are the perfect solution!
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Washable tempera paint
- Sturdy white paper, card stock, or these small canvases that we used
- Googly eyes
- Glue (we used Super Glue)
- Markers (we used both regular washable Crayola markers, as well as some Sharpie permanent markers)
A quick note: This is definitely a two-part process, so just plan for that in advance!
The first step is to squeeze a good amount of paint on the center of the canvas or paper. I let each boy pick 3 colors to use for their monsters, but you could obviously stick with just one color or use even more.
Then I gave each child a straw and showed them how to blow through the straw just above the paint, using the air to push the paint around the canvas. They could (somewhat) control the direction of the paint by the way that they moved their straws, making it fun to shape their creatures and mix the colors on their pages.
Once we were happy with the way that our paint looked, I set the canvases aside to completely dry overnight.
The next day I pulled out the eyes, glue, and markers to finish off our designs. It was fun to see the creatures that each of the kids envisioned!
I was in charge of actually gluing the eyes onto the monsters (because I didn’t want the boys using the Super Glue), but they decided how many eyes their monsters would have, and exactly where each eyeball would go! Then they used the markers to give their colorful friends arms, legs, spikes, horns, etc.
And now for your viewing pleasure…here’s the example that I made for the boys…
Casey (age 5)
Spencer (age 2)
Gibbs (age 6)
I hope that you get a chance to try this activity with your favorite little people! It’s a great way to tap into their creativity and entertain them for quite awhile! Enjoy!