Homeschool Co-op Art Class (5-7 year olds)

A lot of my friends homeschool their kids...and a group of them decided to do an unofficial homeschool co-op for the kids to get together and socialize and learn subjects like art and science and phys. ed. I don't have any kids, but I end up being one of the artsiest girls of the bunch and seem to have been dubbed the resident art expert. And I was asked if I could teach an art class for the co-op.

This week I was teaching the 5-7 year olds...10 of them. And I was teaching about color-mixing...with paint. 5-7 year olds x 10 + paint = messy disaster...right? Nope! Everything went so smoothly! I think one reason is because the kids didn't actually get to use paintbrushes (this time). I did 2 activities with them that had the paint pretty contained...

I took shoeboxes and taped a piece of paper inside...had the kids pick 2 colors of paint...squirted the paint in...add a few marbles...let the kid tilt and shake the box.

The second activity that we did was the classic "Ink Blot"/Rorchach Test project. I gave the kids pre-folded paper...asked them to pick 2 colors of paint...dripped somepaint on their paper...and had them fold it in half. Surprisingly enough, they liked this project even better than the marbles! When given a choice between doing one of the projects a second time, they all chose the "ink blot" project! (I would have thought they would pick the "marble roll"!)

All in all, the class was a rousing success! All the kids seemed to have a lot of fun.

I know you're not supposed to have favorites as a teacher, but this "ink blot" (shown above) was my absolute favorite out of all of them! Everyone unanimously thought it looked like a big pair of lips! There was another one I forgot to take a picture of where the kid used black and blue...he said the black part looked like a sheep head (which it did!), but I thought the blue part on top of the black sheep head part looked like a hot water bottle. So I said it looked like a sheep with a head cold! (Oh, I wish I'd thought to take a picture of it!)

The hardest part is finding a place for all the wet paint to dry!..and then having it dry in time for the kids to take them home. We globbed way too much paint on the paper for the "ink blots"...because the hole is so big on the caps of the bottles of tempera paint I have. I need to find some clear condiment bottles (like the hot-dog stand style ketchup bottles) so I can have a bit more control of how much paint comes out. (I should just make sure I don't store the red or yellow paint in the refrigerator!)