Painting with Cotton Swabs

Today we did another activity to add to our ocean mural. We're almost done with making the ocean creatures, two more to go, and then we'll make the background.

I'm always looking for art activities that are open-ended. There's certainly a time and place for doing a craft that has one outcome. But they can limit creativity because there's only one way to do them. Using techniques and provocations that require more imagination from the child allows their ideas to come through and places more emphasis on the creative process as opposed to the product. 

Supplies: paint, cotton swabs, construction paper (white), crab outline

I chose to turn the end product into a crab but you could do anything your child was interested in. 

Painting with different objects is always a hit with kids. They can explore how to manipulate the paint using something other than a paintbrush. 

I told Monkey that we'd be painting and then using the paper to make a crab. He chose to use only red paint even though I offered him many colours to choose from. He's in the stage where everything is very literal. Crabs are red, so his crab has to be red. 

Monkey got started with the cotton swabs. Since they are a bit smaller than a paintbrush he found them to be pretty messy and he didn't love that aspect of it. He went through quite a few because he didn't want to use them anymore if the paint got up where his fingers were touching. 

I told him to try and cover the whole page with red. He painted for about four minutes, not too bad. 

I figured he had done one big section at least, which could be the body of the crab. 

When the paint was dry, I cut out the crab I had printed off and traced it onto the back of the paper Monkey had painted. Whenever possible, I trace on the backside of the paper to ensure that my trace lines won't be visible. 

Then I cut out the crab and we added on some googly eyes. It's so cute!!

Mar