At-Home Art Activities for kids

Salty Puff Paint

What you’ll need:

• Equal parts flour, water, salt to make the paint
• Food colouring (can substitute tempra paint or liquid watercolour). You can even use sidewalk chalk to colour the salt before you mix it in with the other ingredients – this will result in pastel colour
• Mixing bowl and spoon
• Paper, cardboard, or any surface to paint on
• Squeeze bottle (you can use empty water bottles or plastic bottles and poke a hole in the lid, you can even put paint in a ziplock bag and cut a small hole in one corner).

Instructions:

• Mix together flour, salt, and water. Add in colouring and continue to mix
• Once the paint is well mixed, transfer to a squeeze bottle. Ensure the lid is on tight. If you have made multiple colours, put each colour in it’s own bottle.
• Use the squeeze bottles to create your designs and drawings on paper, cardboard, plate, or whatever other surface you would like to use More ideas:
• Have salt, water, and flour? You could also make salt dough!
• Use the salt dough to make ornaments or small sculptures
• Allow to air-dry, or bake in the oven until fully dried. Acrylic paint works very well to decorate dried salt dough.

Leaf Tracing/Nature Art

What you’ll need:

• Go for a walk outside and collect leaves and other interesting artifacts from nature
• White paper
• Crayons or pencil crayons

Instructions:

• Collect dry leaves and arrange on flat surface – place your paper overtop of the leaves
• Gently use crayons to colour over the paper (it’s best to peel back the label so you can use the length of the crayon to shade over the leaves).
• If you found other nature items that you would like to use – give it a try and see if you can get a transfer from it the same way you did with the leaves! If that doesn’t work – try using the materials to make a sculpture, a monster, a mini machine, rock paintings, etc.

Bird Feeders

What you’ll need:

• Empty toilet paper/paper towel roll
• Peanut butter, honey, or another sticky substance
• Seeds and oats
• String

Instructions:

• Take an empty paper roll and punch two holes close to the top of the roll. Be mindful not to punch the holes too close to the top – aim for about an inch below the edge.
• Next you will cover the roll in peanut butter. Then cover the peanut butter in seeds/oats.
• Once your bird feeder is complete, feed some string through the two holes at the top and tie string in a knot.
• Find a place to hang your bird feeder – maybe you can find a spot to hang it where you can also see it from inside?

Hearts In The Window

What you’ll need:

• Coloured paper
• Scissors
• Markers, pens or crayons
• Masking tape

Instructions:

• Cut heart shapes out of coloured paper
• Add bright drawing and messages of hope and inspiration
• Tape them up in your front window

Communities across Canada and around the world have been inspired to place paper hearts in their windows as a message of hope to each other and encouragement to those who are fighting COVID-19 on the front lines. You can check out the Facebook group “​ Hearts in the Window”​ for more details.