Art ProjectsToddlersKindergartners8 Comments
I’ve been wanting to try rain art for awhile. But it seems whenever it rains, we just hide indoors.
Why?! Being outside when its sprinkling it so much fun! The boys just love it!
Its been raining pretty much non-stop the last few weeks (a horrible planting season for farmers in Iowa this year).
I finally took advantage of all the rain drops and the boys and I got to see the cool effects of rain!
I’ve seen rain art be done a few ways… and I don’t think we chose the best…
I’ve seen Messy Kids use Kool-aid on paper.
I’ve seen Moment to Moment use oil pastel crayons… (by the way, look at the lanterns they made from the art, they’re fantastic!)
Even Little Page Turners used just drops of food coloring (my favorite)!
I chose to have the boys color with chalk art pastels that I had on hand. They’re a very soft chalk.
They colored a piece of paper however they liked. I let them choose two colors each (so we wouldn’t end up with muddy brown).
I showed Henry how you could used your finger to smudge the colors together. He tried it. And used his whole hand. Of course, George followed suit.
When they had their papers covered how they liked them, we took them outside since it had been sprinkling on and off all morning.
Of course, when we head out there… it doesn’t rain… we waited and waited… the boys kept coming back to check on them, just in case they missed the rain.
We left them be and headed out on a walk downtown.
Of course, it poured when we were out for a walk.
We remembered the art that we did when we were getting home and Henry rushed to check it out.
He thought his was the best (of course, his is the best everything!).
Henry’s turned out with lots of dark dots, which he thought was just amazing.
George’s, you really couldn’t see the rain spots, but it did seem more blended together.
Whatever the result, it didn’t matter, the boys thought it was fascinating seeing what the rain would do to the art they made!
This could definitely go into the paint collection as a fun method for kids to try. Click for 50 paint tools, methods and recipes!
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Ann says
What a fun project, and especially for those whose precipitation is now rain instead of snow…makes the anticipation of springtime a lot of fun! Thanks, I’ll be sharing your post tomorrow!
Rachael Rabbit says
We did this the other day. We used watercolor paper and put drips of liquid water color paint on them. The results were BEAUTIFUL. I actually plan to frame some they are that pretty. The girls really enjoyed running out into the rain and then watching as the pictures developed on our porch. We will certainly be doing this activity again
Jamie Reimer says
Okay, I have yet to ever have liquid watercolors —- just liquid food coloring. Where do you find the liquid watercolors???
New Song Music Studios says
Super cute idea! I love letting my kids run around in the rain..as long as there is no thunder clouds. So going to try this..wait it’s raining right now! Ha!
Jamie Reimer says
Yep! That’s our rule too – as long as there’s not thunder or lightning, they can go out and play in it :) Hope you were able to try it when it was raining!
suzyhomeschooler says
We’ve done rain art using the food coloring method a couple times (once when LittleMan was 2 and again when he was 4) and both times were an absolute hit. One thing we’ve done differently is we sit by the door and watch the art work get rained on on our porch, that way he can decide when he thinks the rain has done enough “helping” with his painting. We’ve also included a spray bottle for no other reason than that he likes “making rain.” Ours looked pretty cool and we had a hard time parting with them when it was time to rotate the art on display in our home. I had never thought of trying oil pastels or kool aid, I’ll have to give them a go, thanks for the tip!
Jamie Reimer says
That was our plan too – to watch it be rained on from our porch — but it just wasn’t raining, so we left – and of course, that’s when it rained…. ha ha! I think it would have definitely added more involvement in the process if they had been there during the rain shower.
I love the idea of just adding the spray bottle. We just did one with coffee filters – but never thought to do it like this. Thanks for the tip!