Half Spider (with free printable template)
(Edvard Munch’s) “The Scream” Blow Painting
Starlight Pumpkins (Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd grade)
I recently wrote about painting with Q-tips instead of brushes. The following is one of the many Q-tip painting projects I’ve done with lower grade kids. This one we called “funky monkey” because the kids were encouraged to create all aspects of a very unusual monkey. Each kid first got a funky monkey printable (click here: Funky Monkey – printable).
On the back of the page, they wrote their name and the date. Then they wrote key words describing their funky monkey. These key words would be helpful when starting to write about the monkey. Here are some of the questions I asked to help them start thinking about their new character.
After describing the character, the kids got to paint their monkey using Q-tips. In the white space, the kids could paint anything they wanted about the monkey (paint its favorite food, etc.).
We set the project aside for a few days to let the paint dry. Then chose a writing project from the following options:
For the kids who finished painting quickly or wanted a friend for their funky monkey (in their story), they repeated the above steps again with this tiger printable (click here: Tiger – printable).
Finally, the kids got to share their painting along with their writing. We wanted to mount both onto an 11″ x 17″ sheet of construction paper to display them, but we ran out.
Overall, it was a fun and the kids liked using their imagination. You could add variety to this project by giving students more animal options to choose from. To find other printables like these, search “animal coloring pages for kids” (or something similar) on an internet search engine. Choose a coloring page that doesn’t have too much detail (since it’s hard for the kids to paint in).
Kids love to paint. But adults hate cleaning paintbrushes.
I recently worked with a school that didn’t have lots of funding for art supplies. But they also didn’t have good facilities with sinks for cleaning brushes. Our solution was Q-tips! At some we were skeptical about the quality of work that could be produced with a Q-tip as opposed to a paintbrush. We were working mostly with kindergartners, so we didn’t really have to worry. They were way better for making dots than paintbrushes. And it was the easiest clean-up ever! So if you’re looking for a low-budget option for paintbrushes, consider Q-tips.