Toddler Art Class: Cling Wrap Painting

A great option for kids who hate to get messy (although you can choose to get messy with this if you really want to!).

Art Project: Cling Wrap Painting
Supplies:
paint
plastic wrap (cling wrap / cling film / Saran wrap... whatever you want to call it)
heavy paper

Book:  
  Mix it up! / Tullet, Hervé



 What Kids Do: 
In our groups, I asked the grown-ups to distribute the paint onto the papers.

This goes a bit against my "big hands off the art" policy, but I wanted quick distribution and no giant puddles of paint that would rob other kids of the chance to try this project. Then, each adult put a sheet of cling wrap on top of the paint and let the kids at it.

 The colors started off staying fairly well contained, but the more you smooshed them around...

 the more blending started to occur!

Aaaaannnddd the more squished up/annoying and in-the-way the cling wrap became (at least for some kids)

 In fact, some just decided to use the cling wrap AS a brush.  Good idea!

You know what? Paint is fun and no matter how many "variations" I try to complicate the project with, painting days invariably turn to this at some point:

So let's just roll with that.  I loved that this artist discovered the joy of handprints:

And this artist discovered the joy of monoprinting:

 pontillism...

And this artist enjoyed exploring negative space by drawing her finger through wet paint:

These artists explored symmetry:

 

(check it out! do you see the hummingbird?)

This artist explored layering:

This artist played around with expanding preconceived boundaries:

this artist tried alternative painting tools:

Hindsight Tip: for the second class, we tried wrapping the cling wrap around the edges of the paper and that helped a bit, but if you really want a mess-free painting project, zip-top plastic bags are the way to go.