Painting is a great way for kids to have some creative fun, and with cotton q-tips, it’s easy to do. All you’ll need are some q-tips (of course), a bowl of water, a few containers of paint in different colors, paper plates, and something to cover the surface you’re painting on.
20 Creative Painting Projects For Kids
Painting is one of those hobbies that never goes out of style. And it’s not just for the beginner either- even veteran painters can learn new techniques to refine their art. Painting is also great for developing your child’s creativity and imagination, as well as improving their motor skills.
We have 20 beautiful paintings that are sure to get your creative juices flowing and inspire hours of painting memories. Make something new with these ideas and enjoy painting together! They’re perfect for kids of all ages!
Funny Painting With Pendulum
Painting with a pendulum may not sound like something that most children will enjoy, but there are plenty of benefits to this activity.
Fingerpaint Flowers And Butterflies
Make some fingerpaint flowers and butterflies! You can even add a little text to make into an invitation for a little girl’s birthday party.
80 Easy Creative Projects for Kids
11 years of parenting, 4 years of co-op preschool and 6 years of blogging means that my family and I have tried just about a gazillion projects for kids…. okay maybe not a gazillion but certainly in the hundreds! Some projects have made the blog, others are favorites from other bloggers, and some are just simple creative prompts and activities you can set-up in a matter of minutes. Here is a collection of 80+ EASY CREATIVE PROJECTS FOR KIDS we have tried over the years.
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Pictured Projects are shown in ITALICS
1. Scratch Art We have used store bought scratch art paper as well as made our own. This is the easiest method we have used to make scratch art and this method is less messy for more long term art pieces.
2. Chalk Pastels Take a break from crayons and bring out the pastels! I love the soft pastels because you can blend them with your fingertips to create new colors and shading.
3. Oil Pastels This was my favorite art supply as a child. I love the rich color of oil pastels and the way they glide on paper. For a variation try using light oil pastels on dark colored paper.
4. Paper Scrap Collage Taking a note from Tinkerlab’s Art Tips I have started saving all the paper scraps from projects and cutting them up into pieces for collage projects.
11. Leaf Collage This was actually a school assignment that I thought was a great idea. Collect leaves and glue them to newspaper. Done!
12. Homemade Stamps One of my fave DIY projects! Homemade stamps are fun to make, fun to use, and I think the results are amazing. For the full tutorial click here: How to Make a Stamp
14. Colored Salt I love making our own art materials at home. We have made colored salt and used it for science and art projects. It’s a great starter project for kids who want to be involved in making their own art materials. For the colored salt tutorial click here.
15. Handprint Art Children love to get their hands covered in paint. Let them! Messy art is important for developing creative confidence. Use washable paint and have a stack of paper handy. Better yet, roll out a long sheet of butcher paper and let a group of kids make a giant handprint mural!
17. 3D Heart Print our template here and make a colorful 3D heart! We made these in my daughter’s first grade classroom for Valentine’s Day.
21. Easel Art My daughter loves painting at her easel and it shows. When the weather is nice take the easel outside. You can even encourage your young artist to try and paint something they see. Another fun variation is paint with a friend or grandparent!
22. Spin Art This spin art machine is fairly inexpensive and a lot of fun to use, even for the littlest of artist. If you don’t want to buy a machine you can also make spin art using a salad spinner.
24. Salt Paintings We used some of our colored salt to make salt paintings. Place a sheet of paper on a cookie sheet. Squeeze glue directly from the bottle onto the paper to “draw” your picture. Dump the excess salt into a bowl. You can add different colors in stages. When finished let dry completely and shake off excess salt. The more glue you use the better the salt will adhere to it. You can also try a variation using plain salt and adding color via eye droppers. See how to do it here on Meri Cherry.
Pictured Projects are shown in ITALICS
1. Wizard’s Brew We have made this countless times and it always induces lots of squeals and screams of delight! Get the recipe in this post- Item #3.
2. Book Ramps Build ramps out of books! These are great for use with Matchbox cars and remote controlled cars. Enlist your child in the process of making for an easy hands-on engineering project.
3. Lego Building Challenge Lay out a collection of Lego pieces and challenge your child to build something specific from the available parts. This is a much more inventive use of LEGO than simply following premade directions for building.
5. Gluing Wood I had some scraps of birch wood left over from a project so my kids put them to use making wood sculptures held together with wood glue. My kids did not believe that they could glue wood together and that it would hold. The furniture designer in me used it as an opportunity to show them how strong the right glue can be!
6. Paper Helicopters My kids love these! For the full tutorial click here: Paper Helicopters.
7. Water Beads These are a sensory exploration must-have! Just be sure to use them with children who do NOT put things in their mouth as they are a choking hazard. Here are some science activities we have tried with them
- Place the clear beads in a bowl of water. They will visually disappear….tell your child to feel for them.
- Place the beads on a paper towel for a few days and watch them shrink back up to their original size.
- Freeze them! Make a large ice chunk from water and hydrated beads. Then place the icy water bead mix in a bowl or kiddie pool filled with water. The full size water beads will unthaw, shrink, and then grow in size again.
10. Sand Rivers This is a classic for me since I personally love to build them! All you need is a sandbox, some digging tools, and access to water. NOTE: This activity is only suitable for sandboxes that drain. Start by digging a long, twisty channel through the sand. For the best river, make it slightly slope from one end to the other. Then dig out “lakes” at each end of the channel. Pack the sides of the channel so they don’t immediately slide inward once water is added. When you’re done creating the river, pull a hose around to the top lake, bury for added effect with the end of the hose pointing into your lake, then turn on a slow trickle of water. Within a few minutes the river will start flowing! Add boats, plastic animals, toy soldiers, bridges, matchbox cars, whatever you can think of!
11. Harvesting Seeds Materials: A variety of dried flowers, bowl or cup, Ziploc baggies, paper towels, stapler
- Step One Give your child a variety of dried flowers and a bowl or large cup
- Step Two Show your child how to find seeds in one of the flowers. Start with a flower that has easy to find and distinguish seeds. Some flowers seeds are so tiny your child might not even recognize them so you may need to show them samples of what they are looking for.
- Step Three Wet a paper towel and place it into the Ziploc baggie. Add several staples across the bottom of the bag about 1 inch from the edge. These will prevent the seeds from falling to the bottom of the baggie.
- Step Four Ask your child to place the seeds in the bag and press into the paper towel with some spacing in between them.
- Step Five Seal the bag and tape or hang it in a sunny window or outside in a sunny spot. Your seeds should sprout in a few days!
14. Ice Cream in a Bag Everyone MUST try this during the summer!
15. Clay Boats A classic engineering activity, take clay and ask your kids to mold it into mini boats. They will quickly learn what shapes and properties make a boat float! Check out our full tutorial here.
Pictured Projects are shown in ITALICS
1. Washi Bamboo Another stick decorating project we love: pair bamboo and washi tape together. Bamboo has a smooth texture just perfect for tape to adhere to. Add in some paint on top of it for even more color!
2. Flower Lei If you have a camellia bush or other hearty flower growing ion your garden try this: Gently pop out the center of the flower and string it on a piece of string. Add more flowers and tie the ends together to form a simple colorful lei.
4. Paper Clip Jewelry My daughter loves jewelry but it is often hard for little hands to work with small beads. Why not use paper clips? String colorful vinyl coated paper clips together to make necklaces and bracelets. To make Paper Clip Cuff cut a toilet paper roll in half and then again down the center. Use paper clips to decorate the edges, and securing it to your wrist with a couple rubber bands.
6. Envelope Book We used astrobrights to make this easy envelope book but you can easily do it with plain white envelopes and decorate them. Skip the cover for an even easier book.
7. Robot Faces Cut some adhesive backed magnetic sheets cut into little pieces and stick them to pom poms and googly eyes. Then stick the pom poms and eyes to tin cans to make robot faces.
8. Paper Planets A simple paper project with lovely results!
11. Toilet Paper Roll People This was a hit at our co-op preschool a few years back. Have children decorate toilet paper rolls as people using googly eyes, fabric scraps, pipe cleaners, and yarn.
13. Glow Stick Jewelry Don’t toss old glow sticks out! Use them as a base for colorful DIY bracelets. See how we did it here.
15. Fairy Wands
Materials: Herbs from your garden, sticks, rubber bands, ribbon, burlap, long fabric scraps cut into 3 or 4-foot lengths
Pictured Projects are shown in ITALICS
2. Bubble Wrap Rug Next time you get a package with bubble wrap SAVE IT! Throw it on the floor, connect separate sheets with duct tape and pop away! What a fun way to spend an hour!
4. Lego City One of our favorite all-time activities is to bring out the LEGO bin and create and an enormous Lego City. We typically take over a large table and build the city over the course of a few days. Our last metropolis included an airport, police station, jail, Hello Kitty house, park, and lake. I particularly love the collaborative aspect of this project.
5. Cardboard Box It never fails, put a large cardboard box in front of your kids and walk away. Trust me, they’ll be busy for an hour.
7. Light Show Grab a handful glow sticks, turn out the lights and swing them around! The light leaves faint traces as your move them. This is a great activity to try this in front of a big mirror and the perfect way to work out some pre bedtime energy!
9. Thaumatropes Thaumatropes are a classic optical illusion project for kids! We have a template for simple geometric ones here. I also love this version of the classic project on What Do We Do All Day 10. Shaker Noisemaker Easiest homemade instruments ever: grab a few small Tupperware containers and some small, noisy objects: think beads, rice, beans, pasta. Place them in the containers and make your own shakers. Ask your child if they can hear the differences in the sounds made by various objects.
11. Balloon Fun Besides a cardboard box, the cheapest toy you can buy for your kids that provides hours of fun has to be balloons. One of the best activities we have done with balloons is to bounce them in a confined space- a long hallway is perfect for this! My daughter also loves to draw faces on them with Sharpies and you can’t go wrong with rubbing them on your hair in front of a mirror!
12. Woodworking Balsa wood is soft and perfect for kids to work with because it’s really easy to nail into. Here is a simple woodworking starter project: Cut a few pieces of balsa wood into smaller pieces, put them out on a table with some tools, tacks, screws, and small nails and invite your kids over! My kids LOVED this activity to say the least, especially hammering. Make sure your children know how to use the tools safely, and supervise as needed depending in their ages. With proper precaution this simple woodworking activity is a sure hit for kids even as young as 4.
14. Confetti Rice Colored rice is a wonderful material for sensory play. See a few ways we have used it for play here: Confetti Rice and get the recipe for dying it here on Fun At Home with Kids.
16. Tape Roads We love using painter’s tape to map out roads on our kitchen floor! It comes off easily when you are done with the project. P.S. If you have a long hallway consider mapping out a bowling lane on the floor. Use wood block as your pins and a soccer ball as your bowl ball.
Pictured Projects are shown in ITALICS
3. Cup & Ball Game Transform a yogurt cup and skewer into game that gets your hand-eye coordination.
4. Tin Can Stilts A classic DIY toy! For the full tutorial click here: Tin Can Stilts.
6. Rattle Drums My kids love homemade noisemakers and these were fun to both make and spin. 7. Hexactly Fun If you like block play consider adding this set into your collection. The hexagon shapes offer a new building challenge to kids Hexactly.
8. AquaDoodles If you don’t have AquaDoodles run out and buy a set. It’s just a simple cloth board that changes color when wet. But it never ceases to amaze kids (or adults for that matter).
9. Marble Run A favorite project we do every once in a while using items for our recycling bin.
10. Op-Art Pinwheels Print out our template and make a few colorful pinwheel for your garden!
11. Disco Discovery Bottles
Materials: Empty Water Bottles, Glowsticks, Hot Glue Gun & Glue Sticks (optional), fun stuff to fill the bottles with: water beads, rice, milk, orange juice, soda, rock salt, salt, flat marbles, tissue paper…
This is a temporary project! These Disco Discovery Bottles will glow for one night only. If you want to keep them longer consider omitting the hot glue step and changing out the glow sticks when you want to use them again. You also may want to consider making these at night to be able to see the effects of the light diffusion right away.
- Step One Assemble your materials & heat your hot glue gun
- Step Two Start activating the glow sticks by cracking and shaking them so you get a nice glow. The glow sticks we used came with connecters to make them into bracelets. We connected the loose ends of each stick and then placed several glow bracelets in each bottle.
- Step Three Pour in the light diffusing materials!
- Step Four To make these baby safe add a ring of hot glue around the inside edge of the cap and screw it on tight. Add another layer of hot glue around the bottom of the cap to seal it in place.
Well this list of projects for kids ought to keep you busy for, oh I don’t know…a YEAR! It certainly has kept our family creating for along time!
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Comments
- Holly Woolson says July 7, 2016 at 3:50 pm
I love your lessons and have been sharing them with kids in my community. Is this resource avaluable in hard copy? If yes, I would like to buy it! Thanks for your creativity and the clear, accessible way you present your ideas. Awesome!!
Your comment made my day Holly! I do not have this available as a PDF but you just gave me great idea! Stay Tuned!
Now this is an awesome gift! These activities will not only help in keep the kids away from screens but will also encourage creativity and fine motor skills!
Creative Painting Ideas For Kids To Try
For one thing, consider whether or not you want to purchase one of the many paints that are specially designed for little ones. You may also find paint that is specifically designed for older kids or even adults. Some of the more popular ones for adult or little ones include the Watercolor and Oil paintbrushes. These brushestones can create beautiful splashes of color in any room of your house. They are especially nice if you are going to be hanging pictures, adding decorations, or doing crafts with a lot of tiny pieces.
See also 80 Easy Diy Canvas Painting Ideas
Another great suggestion is to find a dessert or salad spinner that you can paint on. These are very useful tools, and they are perfect for helping kids to practice their fine motor skills as they paint. You can paint on one end while the spinner is full of paint on the other end. This is a fun activity for those who like to do a variety of different things in their own home. Check around at the local department store for other cool and creative ideas that you can use when it comes to painting and decorating.
See also 20+ Shades of Yellow Color Palette
Nature-inspired paintings are also a great option for kids. Encourage them to observe the beauty of the natural world and recreate it on paper or canvas. They can paint flowers, trees, landscapes, or even bugs and butterflies. This activity not only allows children to connect with nature but also helps them develop their observation skills and appreciation for the environment.
Additionally, collaborative painting projects can be a fun and interactive activity for kids. Set up a large canvas or a mural board and invite children to paint together. They can take turns adding their own unique touches to the artwork, creating a collaborative masterpiece. This activity promotes teamwork, cooperation, and creativity as children learn to share ideas and work together to create something beautiful.
Creative painting ideas for kids provide a wonderful opportunity for them to explore their imagination, develop their artistic skills, and have fun. Whether they are creating animal-inspired paintings, experimenting with abstract art, capturing the beauty of nature, or engaging in collaborative projects, these activities can ignite their creativity and foster a love for art. Encouraging children to express themselves through painting allows them to develop their fine motor skills, learn about colors and composition, and build their confidence as they see their ideas come to life on the canvas.
See also 100+ Fantastic Fonts And Where To Find Them!
By providing a supportive and nurturing environment, we can inspire children to unleash their creativity, think outside the box, and find joy in the process of creating art. So, grab some brushes, paint, and canvases, and embark on a creative journey with your kids as they explore the world of painting and discover their own unique artistic voices.
