4 Simple Art and Craft Projects for Kids (4) - Working with Crayons

It's summer vacation once again and I see lots of paper everyday with colored drawings made by my three daughters. Janel, especially, likes to draw and color and she's getting better and better at it.

This post is dedicated to some art activities which you can do using crayons. Here are some ideas which you may want to do with your kids this vacation.

1. Color by number. This is what Kristel did 2 summers ago. It is a good way to introduce the kids to proper coloring of objects since they get to give objects the right color with guidance. Notice how toddlers tend to color objects with just one color?  This would teach them to color pictures with different colors.

2. Make a color wheel. A sample of a color wheel that my son did is pictured below. It's a circle divided equally into wedges and colored with different colors. It can help introduce your kids to the different colors. 

You can do the three types of color wheels. The primary color wheel only has the blue, red and yellow colors. The secondary color wheel has 6 colors which is a mix of two primary colors. The secondary colors are put in between the two primary colors mixed.

• Red + yellow = orange
• Blue + yellow = green 
• Blue + red = violet or purple 

The tertiary color wheel has 12 colors which is a mix of a primary and secondary color just like the picture below.  

• Yellow + orange = yellow-orange
• Yellow + green = yellow-green
• Blue + green = blue-green
• Blue + violet = blue-violet
• Red + orange = red-orange
• Red + violet = red-violet

3. Make artistic bottled crayons. This is an art project which my son did using a bottle and crayons. You will not use crayons to color anything but to decorate the bottle. Use the sharpener to make thin sheets of crayons. Make as many colors as you like. Then, get a bottle and put a little water inside and wet the interior sides. Then, put the crayons into the bottle and tilt the bottle, swirling the crayons. You'll see that the crayons will stick to the sides of the bottle. You can additionally add embellishments outside the bottle. You can use this as a decor or maybe a vase.

4. Make an ironed crayon painting. I can't find the picture of a sample of this art project so I'll just describe how to make it. You will need different colors of crayons, waxed paper, and hot iron (kids ask help from a grown-up). As in the bottled crayon, make thin sheets of crayons using a sharpener. Spread these on top of one waxed paper. Arrange them any way you like. Be sure to put them on top of the waxed side of the paper. Then, put another waxed paper on top with the waxed side down. Run the hot iron on top of the waxed paper art once. Wait a few seconds for the paper to cool and you'll see a nice colorful design.

I hope these will give you and your kids something artistic and budget-friendly activities to do.