Family paintings

I've been wanting to do a family art project for a long time. I don't care about the end result as much as I care about the fun experience and memory for the children. I'd hang up the piece just so they could remember the activity, regardless of how it turned out.

Our first group painting was an easy beginning project, Jackson Pollock style.

The investment was very small. I took an old crib sheet and cut the elastics off. This made a perfect canvas. It was large enough for people to move around and dance while they paint, but small enough that their short arms could reach the middle. The children swept the patio and we laid the sheet down, weighting the edges with rocks and bricks.

The paints were old leftovers from my ancient craft box. These were colors I never used in the 5 years I had them. Why would I have them if I didn't buy them for a project? We bought a huge bin of paint at a garage sale for five dollars when we lived in Rexburg. I used them for random projects over the years, but it's really time to clean them out and stop lugging them around with us. These are the cheap craft paints that are less than $1 per bottle.

We poured the paints into old condiment containers that were destined for the trash. Those didn't work as well as I'd hoped, so we resorted to just squirting the paint straight from the original bottles.

We turned on really loud fast-paced music (Lazytown soundtracks) and danced in circles around the canvas splattering paint. The children all had a blast laughing and dancing to the beat.

Sarah had been very dubious about a painting made without paintbrushes when I explained the concept to her at the beginning. She didn't want to participate originally, but joined in after seeing the fun everyone was having. At the end of the session she exclaimed, "This is so FUN! When do we get to do the next one?"