We’ve got a great craft activity for all the little artists out there! This abstract art activity is a free form craft where anything goes! Abstract art is a modern form of art that doesn’t look exactly like other things around us. It might make you think, or laugh, or feel something new. It might look like something to you, and something completely different to someone else. Or it might not look anything at all! Abstract art can be anything you can imagine!

In this abstract art activity, we give suggestions for different techniques to try in your abstract art piece. Many of these techniques have been used in some our favorite Super Simple crafts – you might recognize a few! Each one makes a different kind of shape, pattern and texture, and you can use any colors you like.

Try showing your little one a few of these different techniques, and see which ones they like. Some of these techniques are perfect for the youngest of artists, and some are great for artists who have developed their fine motor skills a bit more. Give it a try and see what your little artist comes up with!

Things You Need

• A blank piece of paper

All you need to get started is a blank piece of paper. What other materials you need will depend on the techniques you try. Those special materials are listed under each technique and are in the photo above.

Technique: Aluminium Foil Stamp

Where You’ve Seen This Before: The Great Big Moon Craft

Materials:

• Aluminum foil
• Craft paint

How To: Scrunch and flatten a piece of aluminum foil in a ball. Dip it into paint and stamp it onto your piece of paper. Try stamping the aluminum foil into two different colors of paint for an interesting effect.

Technique: Bubble Wrap Stamp

Where You’ve Seen This Before: Create Your Own Beehive & Snowman Craft & Bubble Wrap Rain Craft

Materials:

• Bubble wrap
• Craft paint
• Paint brush

How To: Using a paint brush, brush paint onto the bubble wrap and press it down onto the paper. Try using different sizes of bubble wrap for a different look, or cut your bubble wrap into different shapes.

Technique: Dotters With A Stencil

Where You’ve Seen This Before: Valentine’s Day Stamp Crafts & Activities!

Materials:

• Dotters
• Paper
• Scissors

How To: Cut a shape out of paper and place the paper shape onto your art piece. For our art piece, we cut out a snowflake shape. Use a dotter to stamp around the edges of the paper cut out shape. Remove the stencil to reveal the shape!

Technique: Make Your Own Stamps

Where You’ve Seen This Before: Apple Tree Stamps

Materials:

• Paint
• Bottle Caps & foam stickers
• Pom poms & clothespin

How To: Stick foam stickers onto a bottle cap to make your own stamps! Dip the stamp into paint and stamp your paper. Clip a pom pom onto a clothespin to make a simple circle stamp with a clothespin handle. Dip the pom pom into paint and stamp your paper. 

Technique: Tissue Paper Blooms

Where You’ve Seen This Before: Tissue Paper Tree Craft

Materials:

• Tissue Paper
• White glue
• Pencil

How To: Cut the tissue paper into squares and wrap them around the eraser end of a pencil. Dip it into white glue and then glue it onto your paper. If this is too tricky for little hands, you can always glue the pieces of tissue paper directly onto the paper for a bit of different tissue paper technique. 

Technique: Cardboard Tube Stamp

Where You’ve Seen This Before: Valentine’s Day Stamp Crafts & Activities!

Materials:

• Cardboard tube
• Glue

How To: Fold the cardboard tube to make different shapes, like a square, oval or bowtie. Dip the end of the tube into paint, and stamp your paper!

For more technique ideas for your abstract art piece, check out these other crafts:

• Car Tracks Craft
• Fork Flowers
• Sponge Stamp Train
• Blow Paint Monsters

You can let your imagination and creativity run wild on your paper with these different art techniques, perfect for little artists. If you would like a bit of structure for your abstract art piece, try starting by drawing a squiggly line all over your paper, connecting the two ends of the line so you make different sections. Then fill each section with a different technique from the list above!

When you’re finished, don’t forget to sign your name and give your art piece a title. What would you name the art piece below? 

We call it ‘The Slimey Snail’. We can’t wait to see your amazing abstract art! 

Need more inspiration? Watch Caitie make abstract art in the classroom in the Caitie’s Classroom episode All About Art. 

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Stamps are a fun and easy way to make a great craft! Little ones will love dipping the stamps into the paint, and making their mark on the paper. Most stamps are easier to grip and maneuver than paint brushes, so they are perfect for little hands! And stamps can be made with things you probably already have in your house. We had some fun coming up with creative ways to make apple stamps, but you can try making all sorts of different shapes. Here are some of our ideas for a great time with homemade stamps!

Use a hard fruit or vegetable, like an apple – to make our apple stamps, we went straight to the source. We cut an apple in half, dipped it in paint, and we had an apple stamp!

Cork – Use the edge of a cork!

Sponge – cut a shape out of a cleaning sponge, and glue it to a bottle cap.

Fun Foam – draw and cut a shape out of the Fun Foam, and glue it to a block.

Pom Pom – Use a clothespin to clip to the top of a pom pom. Use the pom pom as the stamp, and the clothespin as a handle

Pipe cleaner – bend a pipe cleaner into a shape and glue it to the top of a cleaned out yogourt container

Tip: When using stamps, try making a stamp pad out of a clean sponge. Place your sponge on a plate, and squeeze your paint onto the sponge. The sponge will make sure you only get as much paint as your stamp needs, spread out evenly, and a little less mess. Dip your stamps on the stamp pad, and stamp away!

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These Chinese inspired paper lanterns are a lot of fun to create and make great decorations, too! Caitie recently went on a trip to China and saw lots of Chinese lanterns. Lanterns are an important part of Chinese culture – they were first used to light the streets of China, and today are a symbol of a bright future. Red lanterns can be seen all over China, still hanging from street lights to celebrate Chinese culture. Red lanterns are given as gifts during the Chinese Lantern Festival as a sign of good luck and best wishes. You can make these Chinese inspired lanterns at home, and maybe even make one to give to someone for good luck!

Things you’ll need

• colored construction paper
• paper tube rolls
• craft paint
• scissors
• clear tape
• disposable paper plate or something to put the paint on

Steps

Choose any color you like for your lantern, red means good luck. To decorate the paper, bend the paper tubes into different shapes. We used a star, a square, a heart and left one round. These make wonderful stamps to decorate the paper.

Squeeze some paint onto a disposable plate and dip the end of the paper tube into the paint, then stamp it onto your paper. You can try creating different patterns with all of the shapes! Once finished, leave the sheets to dry.

Fold your patterned paper in half. With the folded side at the bottom, cut off a one inch strip from the top of the lantern!

With a pencil, lightly draw a line one inch down from the top of the paper. Then with scissors, cut parallel strips up to the line.

Open and unfold the paper. Roll the top and bottom of the paper into a tube and tape the ends together. Then tape the strip that was set aside early onto the lantern to make the handle.

Now you can hang up your lanterns as a decoration, or give them away as a symbol of good luck and prosperity!

To learn more about Chinese culture and to hear about Caitie’s trip to China, watch our Caitie’s Classroom episode Great Big World!

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Need a quick and easy activity for the kids this holiday season? Practice shapes, colors and Christmas vocabulary with Shapes Christmas Trees. Simply download this Christmas tree PDF template and cut out the pieces according to the color guide. You can use felt, colored paper, or color them yourselves.

To extend the activity, look for colors with “I See Something Blue” or “I See Something Pink”. Can you find something blue, yellow, red or purple?

After, name the different shapes. You might try using “The Shape Song #1” or “The Shape Song #2” to help you review. Besides finding the colors and shapes in the tree and ornaments, look around the room and find more objects made of different shapes, or identify other colored items.

“Decorate The Christmas Tree” is a great song to play in the background as you do this activity together!

Wishing you a very happy holiday season!

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Get your preschoolers involved with a Dinosaur Shape & Number Peg activity! Using wooden clothes pegs, pre-cut foam stickers and cut out dinosaurs, you can create a wonderfully easy and simple learning task for your toddlers. It will help them practise numbers, colours and shapes in a fun and enjoyable way.

Not only will they have the opportunity to practise learning in a light hearted way, the use of clothes pegs simultaneously helps practise of fine motor skills. They will have to work their pincer grasp as they attempt to open and clip the peg onto the dinosaur.

The pincer grasp is the combined movement of the index finger and thumb to hold an object. This fine motor skill displays the required further development of this as it is an important milestone for children to pass through. Being able to do this movement means that brain and muscle coordination are working together. It’s success foresees them to do things such as learn how to write, hold scissors and cut. The development and improvement in the pincer grasp will illustrate that the small muscles in their hands are strengthening giving them more control. It requires not only strength but also hand-eye coordination.

Making Dinosaur Shape & Number Pegs

What you will need:

• x2 construction paper/card stock (coloured or white)
• Scissors
• Wooden clothes pegs
• Pre-cut foam stickers (shapes, numbers)
• Pen/pencil

Instructions:

1. First decide what dinosaurs you will be using and draw their outlines on two separate bits of construction paper/card stock. They will need to be big and robust enough for at least a two year old to hold, so try not to make them too delicate.
2. Cut out your two dinosaurs. Draw on any little details you may like to include.



3. Place all the wooden pegs in front of you and the pre-cut foam stickers. Pick out four shapes and four numbers. You’ll need to make sure each of these pieces have a corresponding, matching pair. Try and make sure the colours match as well as this will help the toddler to begin with, especially if only just starting to learn these subjects.



4. Take one of the matching pairs, remove the paper backing and stick to the end of one of your wooden pegs (where they will pinch it to open it). Do the same with one from every pair, one for each wooden peg, so that you are only left with their corresponding pairs.



5. On one dinosaur, stick the remaining shapes along its back. Then on the other dinosaur do the same but with the numbers.



6. Place them in front of your preschooler and explain that they need to find the matching pair to each of the pegs, and then peg them on.

Waste not want not:
If you would like to further learning, why not flip your dinosaur over and stick some additional shapes or numbers on it. This way you are not wasting any paper. Alternatively, cut a number of different dinosaurs out and use them like worksheets, rotating them when necessary.

Too easy?
Firstly, try mixing the pairs colours up so that they match only in pairing and not in colour. This may throw them off as they realise they may have been relying too much on the colours matching (not a bad thing as this is equally colour practise too).

Once they have that covered, cut out 5+ more dinosaur templates and add other shapes and numbers on them, making sure they have all their corresponding pegs. Pick on template but put all the pegs into the middle. See if they can pick out the relevant matching ones from a larger crown.

Reusing pegs and saving paper
If you are interested in switching the shape and number examples you have on them, why not initially stick them onto the dinosaurs with blue tack, This way you can simply peel it off the dinosaur. The pre-cut foam stickers stuck on the pegs will come off easily.

For more fun dinosaur activities, visit Caitie in Caitie’s Classroom for an episode all about dinosaurs!

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In this episode of Caitie’s Classroom, we are getting ready for our first day at school! School is an exciting place to be, with lots of new things to learn and discover. Below are some helpful resources so you can try out some of the activities from the classroom at home, as well as some new ideas for more learning and playing with a school theme at home or in a classroom.

My Backpack

Caitie is packing her backpack to get ready for school! This is a great starting point for imaginative play, and can spark lots of great conversation to practice vocabulary and critical thinking.

• Ask your little ones what they have in their backpack. Take a look through their backpack together and ask them about each item.
• Ask them about the backpack itself – Caitie’s backpack is purple and yellow with stars. What color is yours? Are there any shapes on it, or other things?
• Try playing school at home and start by packing a backpack with things that you can use throughout the game.
• It’s great to have a backpack ready to go in the morning before school. What are some other things we might need to do to get ready for school in the morning?

How To Get To School

Caitie talks about different ways to get to school: walking, riding a bike, driving or taking a bus.

• Ask your students how they get to school. Ask which way might be the fastest or slowest. Try some critical thinking questions – why one person might drive to school, why one person might walk.
• Try out the different movements Caitie does as she pretends to go to school. Play Simon Says with the different movements – Simon Says ride your bike! Simon Says walk!
• You can play Red Light Green Light with those movements as well. This is especially fun if you are pretending to drive a car. Try having your students move in a circle and call ‘red light’ for them to freeze, and ‘green light’ for them to go! You can also call ‘switch’ or ‘u-turn’ when you want them to change directions.

Car Mat Activity

• Download and print our car mat that Caitie plays with in this episode here: Caitie’s Classroom – First Day Of School Car Mat
  You can follow along with your finger, or if you are able to print it larger, use a toy car!

• Try making your own car mat picture on a large sheet of paper. Ask your little ones about different things that can go on the car mat. Take a walk or drive around the neighborhood to get ideas.
• Make your own car mat with different colored houses for color review.
• You can do a similar activity without making a car mat. Put some stuffed animals or dolls around the house and pretend to be a bus, walking from bus stop to bus stop and collecting the stuffed animals to take to school.

ABCs

In this episode we play ABC Star! You can recreate this game at home by writing out each letter of the alphabet on a piece of paper and laying them out. Then replace some of the letters with stars. Follow along and sing the song with your little one!

• There are lots of different Super Simple versions of the alphabet for lots of ABC practice:
  • Alphabet Chant
  • The Alphabet Is So Much Fun
  • Alphabet Song
• Visit our Super Simple ABCs YouTube channel for lots of great ABC videos: Super Simple ABCs

Tobee!

In this episode we get a special phone call from our friend Tobee! Watch more videos with Tobee here: Sing Along With Tobee

• Get your own Tobee plushie in our shop: https://supersimple.com/shop/

First Day Of School Photos

• In this episode Tobee shares his first day of school photo with us. Here are some tips and tricks to get great photographs of your little ones: Tips & Tricks for Photographing Children

Craft – School Bus Picture Frame

• Here is an easy to follow step by step breakdown of the school bus picture frame we made in the classroom: School Bus Picture Frame
• This craft is a great way to get little ones excited for their first day of school. Try making the frame first so they are excited about taking a photo to put inside it.
• Try changing the photos you put inside the frame. You can put a picture of the new things your child is learning or working on to keep them motivated and excited. Or put in a picture of anything at all, the world is your classroom!

Wheels on The Bus

• Here is our ‘How To Teach’ video for Wheels on the Bus. Watch and follow along for movements, and more great ideas for using this song in the classroom or at home.
  How To Teach The Wheels On The Bus
• There are lots of great Super Simple versions of Wheels on the Bus to sing along to:
  • The Wheels On The Bus (Carl’s Car Wash Version)
  • The Wheels On The Bus (2019)
  • The Wheels On The Bus
• Have fun going faster and faster at the end of the song. How fast can your bus go?
• Role play! Have one child be the bus driver and they can go around the room picking up friends. You can make a pretend steering wheel, and have coins to give the bus driver.

Counting Practice

In this episode we practice counting the fish in the fish tank. You can practice counting by counting different things all around you.

School of Fish

In this episode we learn that a group of fish is called a school. Learn what other groups of animals are called with your little ones. A list can easily be found on the internet. Some of our favorites are a murder of crow, a caravan of camels, an army of frogs and a pride of lions.

Discovery Bin

• You can make your own discovery bin to practice shapes, colors, numbers, letters – anything at all! Place the items in a discovery bin filled with sensory materials, search to find it and identify it.
• You can pretend your whole playroom or classroom is a discovery bin. Look around the room for shapes, colors, numbers and letters. Then count how many you have found. Ask your little ones how many circles they can find, etc.

We hope you have fun singing, playing, learning, and creating! We love to see photos of our friends having fun in the classroom and of their wonderful creations! You can share them with us a few different ways:

• Instagram
• Facebook

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Today we will be learning about Henri Matisse’s Cut-Outs and using his work as a tool to practise your child’s Fine Motor Skills and creativity. We will do this by creating our own Matisse Cut-Out masterpiece. Got older kids that want to join in? No problem! This activity caters for a range of ages.

Henri Matisse was a French artist who is best known for his use of colour and his masterful and fluid draughtsmanship/line work. He was one of the leaders spearheading the Fauvist art movement. This was the 20th century’s first avant-garde art movement. Though this movement only lasted five year it pioneered a change in thinking about colour. Using colour as an expression of freedom and emotion, Fauvism reinterpreted its literal use in imitating nature forever and broke through the stiff art world’s boundaries of the time.

‘Colour was not given to use in order that we should imitate nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions.’

‘When I put down a green, it doesn’t mean grass; when I put down a blue, it doesn’t mean the sky.’

Matisse did not set out to become an artist in the beginning, in fact, he studied law and passed his bar exam with distinction and took a job as a clerk. It was only after he was taken ill with appendicitis that his mother bought him art supplies to occupy his time while resting in bed. It was in this time that he had his epiphany.

Most well know for his paintings, some are not aware that later in life he was confined to a wheelchair and painting became more and more painful for him to do. In overcoming his circumstances in life in order to continue what he loved he began his cut-out technique.

From as early on in his career as 1919 he had been using cut-outs in the initial stages of composing painting murals. He admitted that making changes to a cutout composition is easier than having to repaint it. He used this method in many areas; to visualize a stage set for the theatre and ballet productions; for textile production, as well as for stained glass windows. With a slightly nod to our Art History piece on The History of Stained Glass Window’s, an example of this is Nuit de Noel, 1952, Gouache on paper, cut and pasted and mounted on board, MoMa. This stained glass Christmas window was commissioned by Life Magazine, in January 1952. It was to be in honour of the celebrations at the Rockefeller Centre at the end of 1952. Matisse created a cut-out of what the stained glass window would like and gave it to a craftsman, Paul Bony who made it.

When being interviewed later on in his career he admitted that he had kept this cutout technique a secret but that clearly his innovation of Cut-Out’s had been a long time in the making.

What is a Cut-Out?

Cut-Outs were artworks made from paper painted in gouache paint and then cut out with scissors. Matisse would choose the colours of paint and his studio assistants would paint the rolls of paper. They would then be weighted down so they dried flat. Matisse would then freehand cut shapes out of them and arrange them into compositions either on flat surfaces or later onto his studio walls. Smaller pieces he pined himself on a board on his lap, while larger wall pieces were put up with pins by his studio assistants with his instruction.

Art historians in examining his works have found that he used a variety of different sized scissors in his work. The many different pin holes in some of his work show that they were moved around and pinned more than once to get the composition as Matisse wanted.

His smaller pieces he used a ‘spot-gluing’ technique. This literally meant he put spots of paint on instead of gluing all the cutout pieces completely down. He felt this allowed the piece to keep some movement and a three-dimensional feel to his work.

Why Cut-Outs?

As we mentioned previously, he was confined to a wheelchair toward the end of his life. Throughout his career he had searched to unite both line and colour in his work. In his Cut-Out’s he finally found the perfect match in uniting these aspects. A vast amount of his paper cut outs where cut in one fluid line creating a sinuous shape. These shapes echo his previous genius line figure paintings. He once said the ‘Cut-Outs’ was a process of literally ‘cutting directly into colour’ and ‘drawing with scissors’.

Where?

Where once his studio was the place to cover his head and keep him warm while he painted, by his Cut-Out phase his studio became a part of his canvas, with the walls of the building become part of his compositions. Hotel walls he stayed in became canvases. Where once his Cut-Outs were contained to small pieces to hang on walls, soon they became completely immersive works that covered large spaces as a fresco would.

With all we have learned about Henri Matisse and his colourful Cut-Out works we shall be creating our own pieces, both on a small scale and a big one! Your child can practise their cutting skills, colour recognition as well as stretching their creative muscles while they decide where to stick each piece to make their Matisse inspired compositions.

Why Scissor cutting is beneficial for children to practise

1. Good Fine Motor Skill practise for separating finger and hand dexterity.
2. Strengthens hand muscles in preparation for writing at school.
3. Bilateral Co-ordination as they are using both sides of their body at the same time.
4. Visual Motor Skills with their hand-eye co-ordination.

Tip:

First time your child is using scissors? Buy them some blunt children’s scissors that only cut paper. Get some playdough out and they can practise cutting something soft first.

What you will need:

For small-scale masterpieces

• A3 white paper/card
• Stick glue
• Colourful paper
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Eraser

Older kids joining in?

What you will need:

• Either more colourful paper (if they are really keen they can even paint their own paper like Matisse’s studio assistants did)
• Pencil
• Eraser
• Pin board (optional)
• Drawing pins (optional)
• A step ladder (optional)

Instructions:

1. For the younger children doing the small scale masterpieces, either draw out the shapes on your colourful paper or put some colour paper in your print and print out the designs shown on the printable. Make sure that you have lots of different bright coloured paper!
2. I would suggest giving your children a few easy pieces to cut out. If they are enjoying it, then try giving them some tricker shapes. Don’t force it though, if their attention wanes let them go and try again later. I would suggest doing about 80% of the cutting yourself. This means that once they have finished their cutting they can begin sticking immediately.
3. If you have older children who are getting involved, let them have free reign to draw out and cut the shapes on the coloured paper themselves.
4. Put your A3 white paper or card down on a table with the stick glue and allow your children to stick the Cut-Out’s on the paper. Allow them to do it and try not to influence where they stick pieces. The more overlapping the better!
5. For the older children, if you have a pin board and pins, why not let them pin their design onto the board. If they would like to go further and have cut out loads, let them get creative, creating a huge masterpiece on the wall by stick the pieces on with blue tack!

So there you have it. You should all have VIBRANT, COLOURFUL, EXCITING masterpieces that will brighten your houses. Colour is good the heart and having colour in your lives is scientifically proven to elevate and life your mood. So the more colourful, the better!

Remember to share your makes on social media! Don’t forget to tag us!

The post Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and his Cut-Outs: Fine Motor Skill Practice appeared first on Super Simple.

Try these ideas in the classroom or at home!

• If your students are learning the names of the shapes for the first time, introduce them before you sing the song. You can use shape flashcards, or simply draw them on the board. When drawing a shape on the board, be sure to show the finished shape, but it is also helpful to show how the shape is drawn. Make the shape on the board as your students watch and go slowly as you make each line. You can even count the lines as you make each shape so they learn that a square has four sides, for example.
• Once your students are familiar with the different shapes in this song, the shapes fun can begin! To play the game, simply press play and listen to the song. Each verse encourages students to make the shape. You can have them draw the shape on a piece of paper or pretend to draw the shape using their finger in the air. There is also a musical break in the song where students are encouraged to go find that shape somewhere in the room. You can have your students move about the room to find the shapes, or they can point to a picture of the shape on the board, or maybe they can search through a sensory bin with cut-out shapes in it to find their shape. You can also watch the music video for this song and look for shapes in the video.
• For a great activity to practice identifying and making the shapes, give your students a shapes template. You can also easily make one yourself by drawing an outline of the shapes you want to practice. There are lots of different ways you can effectively use a template like this: have your students trace the outline of the shapes, or color them in. You can use dough or pipe cleaners to make the shapes and place them on top of the template. Or you can use the template as a scavenger hunt list and have your students find one of each of the shapes in the room or in a shapes sensory bin.
• Try playing shapes bingo for a fun game with shape recognition. You can print our game boards, or make your own. Simply make a grid of squares and fill them with different shapes you are learning. You can make shape cards for students to place onto the squares so the board is different each time you play. Then the teacher can draw different shapes from the game one at a time on the board. If a student has that shape on their bingo card, they can cover it up. You can play until someone has bingo, either they have a line marked or their whole board is covered.
• You can also use shape flashcards to play a matching memory game. Print multiples of each card, mix them up, and place them face down on the floor or on the board. Have a student pick two cards to flip over. As they flip over each card have them identify the shape they found. If the two shapes are a match, they can keep the cards and get a point. If the two shapes are not a match, they get turned back over and another student gets a turn to try to make a match.
• For more shapes practice, use The Shape Song #2 which explores more shapes. In the second version, we sing about a triangle, rectangle, oval, and star.

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