Painted Christmas Sticks

Art Workshop for Children by Barbara Rucci is a wonderful process art book of inspiration for young children. We adapted the book’s idea of branch painting and made it Christmas themed painted sticks.

And if you’re wondering what process art is, let me explain briefly . . . Process art, in my estimation, is the best way to teach art to young children because it’s about the process, not the finished product. In other words, there is not a right way to do the art. Instead, kids get to choose how to use the materials provided and create original masterpieces. The ideas in this book are called “invitations”. You will see a list of materials and directions on the process of facilitating the workshop time.

Painted Christmas Sticks

Materials:

Sticks
Paints
Paintbrushes
Craft paper

Go outside and collect sticks from the ground. (Not any trees of course.)

(P.S. I just love how this activity gets kids outside and decorating natural objects!)

Return inside and paint your sticks with Christmas colors — or any colors you want.

In the original Art Workshop activity, the authors give kids pompoms to glue onto the branches. Fun, right!?

The Art Workshop book also suggests variations (they do this for every workshop idea which I LOVE) which include:
– cut 12-in yarn pieces to wrap around the branch
– glue on clothespins and hang the branch on the ceiling with fishing wire to display artwork,
and
– collage the branch with glue and small paper pieces.

Keep painting until you have a decent, colorful bunch.

Put in a vase or jar to display!

This book is quite amazing and I highly recommend it. It includes essays from Reggio-inspired educator, Betsy McKenna plus 27 lovely invitations to create art with beautiful full-color photographs throughout.

Some of the art workshop ideas are:

simple frame paintings
muffin tin prints
cotton swab mini watercolors
self-portraits
still life with doughnut (yum!)
plastic bag monoprints
cardboard collage faces
recycled robots

Don’t these sound fun? I’m excited to try more!