Art Party

My daughter wanted to have an art party for her birthday but I did not want to have 10-15 young children painting in my house so I postponed till summer time.  Here are a few of the pictures I was able to get during the chaos.  We had 11 kids between the ages of 2 and 10 (and three under 6 months). 

I had four different zones set up that the kids could work their way through.

1. The splatter zone  I used magnets to hang a plastic shower curtain on the side of the garage and put a blue tarp on the ground.  I used pie plates to hold paint.  There were a few different types of squishy balls set out on the tarp.  I taped a paper to the curtain and the kids dipped the balls in the paint and then threw them against their paper.  We had a water bucket there so that they could rinse their ball off between colors.  This was the only area that required constant hands-on help and supervision.

Warning:Paint clothes are a must, not just an apron, as the kids wind up to throw they some how spatter their entire back, shoulder, and hair with paint.

Here are some of the master pieces!

2. The paper roll zone  I unrolled a large section of paper down the sidewalk and set out a number of different objects that the kids could use to paint a picture. There were pie pans full of paint, cotton balls, Q-tips, stamps, sticks, and a wide variety of paint brushes.  The little ones spent more time here then at the bigger areas.

Finished product

3. The sidewalk chalk zone  I made sidewalk chalk paint (equal parts water and corn starch then add a couple drops of food coloring).  We tried using some of our glitter water color paint instead of food coloring but it did not turn out well so we just made a variety of colors with the food coloring. 

We started out with only four bowls but as the party was winding down all the kids ended up sitting on the sidewalk wanting to paint just a little more.  I brought out four more bowls and ended up using up a large box of cornstarch (good thing it's cheap).

4. Water-color rag zone   My husband hung a low clothes line from our garage to our shed.  The kids each got a white rag (I could not find any cheap white handkerchief's at Target).  I made up a few bottles of water-color spray paint (water and food coloring) and the kids used the spray bottles to decorate their rag.

Bottles from the Dollar Store

The kids did leave all of the items at my house to dry overnight.  The next day I brought everyone their splatter art pages and water-colored rags.  My daughter handed out small packages of crayons with a note attached thanking them for coming to her art party.

This was an awesome party.  All of the kids enjoyed it.  Having four different activity areas set up at the same time really helped.  We never had more than four kids at one activity at a time so it was easier for the adults to help the little ones.  Set up and clean up were not very difficult because everything was outside.  The supplies were cheap and we were able to use up some of the paint colors that my daughter rarely uses.  This is definitely going to be an annual event!