Do you always have to use a brush to make great paintings?

• construction paper
• tempera paints
• clean plastic-foam vegetable or fruit trays
• child’s paintbrush
• assorted items: pine needles, feathers, twists of paper towels, yarn, plastic flowers, pipe cleaners, and so on

Have your child put on a smock. Cover the table with newspaper. Pour some tempera paint on the plastic-foam trays. Set out construction paper and a brush. Encourage your preschooler to use the paintbrush to paint on the paper. Talk about the brush strokes. Are they wide? thin? drippy? big lines? huge circles? Offer items chosen from the assortment listed above. Ask your child to demonstrate how he thinks he could use these items to paint instead of using a brush. Do they paint as well as the brush? Brainstorm other items from indoors or outdoors to use for brushless paintings. Test them out. Discuss how they work. Which ones were most fun to use? Why? When the paintings have dried, play a guessing game. See if you can match the paint marks to the tools with which they were painted.

• creative thinking
• matching skills
• fine-motor skills
• learning about how tools function