Kids Paint at the Library

      For the longest while I have been itching to do some painting at my branch's weekly craft activity for kids. We have washable tempera paint in abundance so I didn't have to buy any paint.  I wanted to combine a recycle activity with some STEM-related activity so I used some tp rolls and some paper towel rolls which a great teen volunteer and I then made into shapes. I will say from now that the heart shape was the hardest to make and I ended up making two variations of those.  Inclement weather meant that the turnout wasn't as great as most weeks but I was able to save the materials for the next time I do this activity probably in six months or so.

   Here is how I ended up setting up the room. I thought about putting the drop cloths on the tables but decided not to. Some paint ended up spilling on the table and I was able to use clorox wipes to clean the mess fairly quickly. If you look closely you will see some small dixie cups in which I placed small amounts of paint. The kids then dipped the shapes into the paint to make various patterns. I started with red and black paint and then poured more as requested. Going forward I will pour less paint in the cups (just a dot not a lot!) because I had too much left over and I will also wait and see how many kids turn up before I set material out.

This is the cart that I used to wheel all the materials into the room.

Here is a sample pattern I did just to show the kids what they could do.

I could not take pics of any of the actual participants at the branch but I was able to get one of my son when I reproduced the craft at home with my son. We discovered that dollar store paints aren't the best quality (big surprise!)