Art Playgroup: Tire Track Painting and Watercolor Initials

After my initial post about the beginning of our Art Playgroup, I haven’t written anything about it!  It is still going really well, and I’m tempted to invite a few more kids from The Littlest Apple’s Mother’s Day Out class, but I’m worried that then there might be too many kids and not enough space for painting.  We’ll see.  Today we had 6 kids painting.

Last week, our activity was Tire Track Painting.  My truck-loving son loves this activity.  You simply roll trucks/cars/trains through paint and then roll it over the paper.  The cooler the tire treads, the better!  Here’s an assortment of trucks we used:

Here are The Littlest Apple’s paintings.  I forgot to take a picture of all the kids in action…

Today was our third art playgroup, and I think this was the best one so far!  The activity this morning was Watercolor Initials.  Each child was given a piece of paper with their initial taped on with painter’s tape. (Note: the straight line letters like “F”, “T”, “E” “A” are so much easier to tape down than curvies like “B”, “C,” “S”!  My son was the only one in our group with a straight line initial!)  The idea was to paint over the page, then peel off the tape when the paint dries, revealing the child’s initial.  We tried out some new liquid watercolors I ordered online.  The colors were so vivid!  I loved them, and the kids all seemed captivated too.  They stayed at the table painting for the longest yet, painting freestyle, after their initial art was done!  Because these paints are runny, it did get a little messy today. (The kids have all been surprisingly neat so far).  I think The Littlest Apple was the messiest of all.

I really love that shirt.  I hope I can get the paint out!

Again, I forgot to take a picture of the kids in action, but here are some of the masterpieces from the day.

We started to run out of room.  I think I might need to get a drying rack…

And here is The Littlest Apple’s painting after the paint dried and the tape was removed:

The kids also seemed to enjoy all the toys downstairs today.  We have a playroom upstairs, but the kids seemed so interested in the downstairs toys that we didn’t even make it to the playroom!  (Also a sign that we have too many toys! )

Next week we’re doing Cookie Cutter Painting.  My plan is to use Halloween themed cookie cutters and black, orange, and purple paint.  Hope I can dig out those cookie cutters!