Ask A St. Louis Expert: Easy Crafts To Do With Your Kids

Maggie McCart is the Studio Director at Artmart Studio where she teaches many fine art classes to children ages 3-18. She has been teaching art for six years and enjoys enriching all minds through art. Maggie prefers to use fine art in activities for kids so that they can explore themselves as artists and focus on the process of art instead of just the finished product. She uses a number of resources to discover the best activities to do with children, including Pinterest and the many kids art books sold at Artmart. Here are a few crafting tips she has to share.

Oil pastels and watercolors work so well together because the watercolor resists the waxy look of the oil pastel and leaves a great result. Have your child draw a colorful and detailed picture with the oil pastels. Then simply paint over the entire picture with watercolor paint. The paint will only stick to the white of the paper and resists the oil pastel, making their drawing shine through the soft watercolor colors. You can even make a surprise painting where your child only draws with a white oil pastel and then when he/she paints over the drawing, the white oil pastel design magically appears.

Every child has painted with a paintbrush, but what about with a fly swatter or a potato masher? Look around your house, visit the dollar store, and find unusual objects for painting projects. Kitchen utensils work well, like forks, silicon brushes, spatulas, dish brushes and sponges. Toys can be great to paint with also, especially things that roll like balls and cars. See how many paintbrush alternatives you can find and let your child have a blast!

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Children love to paint in abstract ways and they love the element of surprise. In this activity, you get both. You will need a canvas panel, some paint (acrylic or tempera) and some artist tape. Use the tape to make the letters of your child's name. Make sure that you rub the tape down firmly so paint does not bleed underneath it. Then have them paint over the entire canvas, leaving no white spots. Once the painting is dry, remove the tape with your child and they will see their name appear in the middle of their painting.

Children can make their own scratchboard paper with paper crayons and black tempera paint. Simply have your child color an entire sheet of thick paper (watercolor paper works best) with crayons. They are not drawing a picture on the paper. They are just coloring in the entire page with bursts of color. Then paint a layer of black tempera paint over the entire page and let it dry. When it is dry, your child can scratch off the paint with a scratchboard tool or a pointed stick, leaving beautiful rainbow designs on a black background.

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Watercolor can resist things like salt and glue leaving very beautiful and interesting designs. Simply let your child paint with watercolor over an entire sheet of watercolor paper. Then have them add clear school glue and salt. Kids can watch as the paint resists the glue and attracts to the salt. The only trick to this is that the paint needs be very wet for this to work. Your child will end up with a colorful, abstract piece of art.