Find the Little Mind: Earth Day Process Art for Preschoolers

Earth Day is a great reason to get out all the shades of blue and green, and enjoy some process art with your preschooler.

A few tips...

Try to remember that with process art you aren't focusing too much on the outcome... it's all about your kids enjoying the process. For this reason try to resist the temptation to give too much guidance (or end up doing the activity for them to make sure it turns out 'right'). The three activities involve very different techniques, try and choose one which you know your preschooler will enjoy and just give them the freedom to explore the materials. If your child is younger, I recommend sitting with them and joining in with your own equipment set up to model the activity without taking over their working station.

1. Cotton Ball Earth

What you need: two pieces of white card, scissors, tape, pencil, round bowl to trace around, cotton balls, wooden pegs, and shades green and blue acrylic paint.

How to set up: trace around the bowl onto one piece of card and cut out the inner circle. Tape this piece of card over the top of the other one. Put the paints in a palette and attach the cotton balls to the wooden pegs.

How it works: simply let your preschooler fill the circle with cotton ball 'stamps'. Encourage them to use different shades of blue and green, and as they do so you can discuss the concepts of land and water.

The great thing with this set up is that it doesn't matter at all if they paint 'outside of the lines' because when they are done you just remove the top layer of card to reveal a perfectly round globe!

2. Muffin Tin Mini Earths

What you need: muffin tin, acrylic blue and green paints, paint brushes, paint palette, white card, and scissors.

How to set up: cut the card into small squares to match the size of muffin tin circles. Put the paint into the palette and set out all of the equipment.

How it works: there's a whole blog post dedicated to this activity from last year which you can find here. In a nutshell, invite your kiddo to decorate the underside of the muffin tin compartments like little earths. Encourage them to use the different shades of blue and green, as well as exploring using different shapes and mark making techniques with the brushes.

Then simply press a piece of the white card onto the muffin tin (try not to squish it around, just press down), and then lift it up.

The coolest little earths will print onto the card!

You can even have fun trying to identify any prints which actually look like countries or continents if your kids are older.

3. Absorbing Earths

What you need: muffin tin, cotton rounds, water, blue and green food coloring, paint palette, and pipettes.

How to set up: place a cotton round in the base of each muffin tin compartment. Add water and a drop of food coloring to the paint palette sections. You can alter the shade of color by changing how much food coloring you add. Put out the equipment along with a pipette or two.

How it works: invite your little one to add drops of colored water to the cotton rounds to make mini absorbing earths. It's really cool to see how the colors spread over the cotton round.