This is one of those painting ideas that makes me get all excited and look forward to setting it all up to watch the children give it a go! At first glance, you may think you have already tried this but keep reading because I really do think this version of yarn painting is unique and is the coolest!…
To set this up, I had to get Mr. Hayden’s help. Not because it is all that difficult or time consuming but because I chose to wrap yarn around my tall DIY magnetic board which was challenging to do by myself. So Mr. Hayden held the magnetic board up while I wrapped yarn all the way around it from top to bottom then side to side. We taped the yarn in place around the back of the board…
Once we had the board all wrapped in yarn (making sure we had lots of lines), then we set out different colors of paint in cups and some large pieces of art paper. Â If you don’t have a large tray like this, you could wrap individual trays for each child to have their own but I like wrapping a tray so that the string is up off of the surface a bit while the children paint…
The children started the process by painting right on top of the yarn with any color of their choice…
As they continued to paint each line of yarn, they switched up colors of paint. This process works best if the children apply the paint generously and it is absolutely okay if the paint gets on the tray too…
After the children painting the top of the yarn, then it was time to place their paper on top of the yarn and smooth the paper down all over so the paint would transfer from the yarn to the paper…
And then it was time to lift the paper up and see the beautiful print made on the other side…
Once the children got the hang of the entire process, some of them proceeded to paint more yarn and make more prints on their paper while others were happy with the first go round and moved on to something else…
It didn’t matter if there was already paint on the strings when new children came to the table. They simply painted over the strings again and the prints still turned out beautiful…
As they often do, some of the children wanted to continue to paint after making their prints so they painted the inside spaces of their prints…
And as the last child was at the art table painting her print, I just couldn’t resist giving this a go myself so I followed her lead and painted my prints too…
Sometimes, if I will sit with the children and paint, it motivates them to really take their work to another level (although this little one really never needs that extra spark of motivation). We were both quite happy with our completed paintings and sat back to admire them together…
Lots of fun and although I wished some of the children would have spent more time at the table, I know that they always rush through ideas on the first try so we will come back to this idea with a little different spin later on because I happen to think this process really is super cool!
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