If you have a child that loves to paint, this activity will be a sure hit because it allows them to get messy and creative with unusual painting tools to make textured papers..or if you happen to already have a stack of painted papers from your child’s “free paint” that you can’t part with then this is a way to put them to use! We used our papers to make some fun bugs!

I love incorporating books into lessons and activities to connect content and spark imagination so we read the book, A Beetle is Shy by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long prior to our activity. If you haven’t been introduced to the series by these authors, I highly recommend it! They are cleverly written and the illustrations are beautiful and full of inspiration.

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Materials:

• A Beetle is Shy book
• Heavy art paper
• Tempera
• Various tools for making texture: credit cards, forks, hair combs, toothbrushes, toy cars, cotton swabs, sponges, or other items that can be stamped or drawn with
• Texture Tools or this Sponge Wand are fun to have on hand too
• Scissors and decorative scissors
• Glue
• Googly eyes

I have a scrap bin that I put all of the left over papers from other projects or paintings done by my kids that were mostly about the process and not exactly frame-worthy. We pulled some of those out for this project that included leftover papers from our paint blowing activity and our watercolor painting with salt. Marbled papers and spin art papers would also be perfect for this activity.

If you don’t have any papers made yet, then this will be the fun part! See our steps below for making art papers while exploring texture.

Step 1:

I set a tray of tools on the table and had the girls choose a few paint colors for their painting.

We blobbed on the paint and they experimented with the tools. They brushed, scraped, drew lines, and smeared their colors together.

Step 2:

Once they were dry, we put our new art with our other stack of scrap papers. We chose our favorite papers and cut out various shapes to begin creating our bugs.

Lila suggested adding grass, leaves, and sticks for some of the details and I just loved that idea! I think the natural items really made these creatures come to life!

Aren’t these cute?!

I love this one! The long grass legs are so fun!

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