Art & Design projects
Painting, printing, collage and sculpture with everyday materials. Creative art projects for children that are about trying ideas, not getting it perfect.
18 projects · page 1 of 2
Projects
Glowing Tissue-Flame Bonfire
Builds a pretend bonfire from cardboard-tube logs and tissue-paper flames that glows with a battery tea light. Along the way children learn that a real fire needs fuel, heat and air, and the Bonfire Night safety rules: grown-ups light fires, and everyone else stays well back.
Tube-Stamp Firework Prints
Turns old cardboard tubes into fringed stamps that print bursting fireworks on black paper. Children discover radial patterns that spread out from a centre, and see how bright colours stand out best against a dark background, just like real fireworks in the night sky.
Egg-Box Marigold Toran
Children turn egg boxes and paper into a toran, a decorative garland of marigold flowers and mango leaves hung over the doorway at Diwali to welcome guests and bring good fortune. They practise cutting, painting and making a repeating colour pattern.
Stitched Felt Diya Garland
Children sew a garland of felt diya lamps with bright flames to decorate the home for Diwali. They learn to thread a needle, tie a knot and sew running stitch, and why the diya is such an important symbol of light at Diwali.
Rainbow Rice Rangoli
Children dye rice in bright colours and use it to fill in a rangoli, a pattern traditionally made on the floor at the entrance to a home during Diwali to welcome guests and good luck. They practise fine motor control by pinching and pouring, and explore shapes, colour and patterns that repeat around a centre.
🔒 PremiumTorch Sparkler Light Painting
Uses a phone camera on a long exposure to capture torch trails that look like sparkler writing and firework bursts, without any flames. Children learn how a camera sensor keeps collecting light while the shutter is open, and how coloured filters change the colour of light.
Salt-Dough Diya Lamps
Children shape and paint little diya lamps from salt dough and light them with battery tea lights. Diyas are small clay oil lamps lit during Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, to show light winning over darkness and good over evil. Children also see how baking slowly dries the dough until it is hard.
Secret Spell Scroll
Children invent a symbol code, write a hidden spell in white wax crayon and reveal it with watery paint. They learn how a substitution cipher works and why wax resists water, so the paint only soaks into the bare paper.
Fallen Leaf Ghost Parade
A leaf hunt becomes a ghost-making session, with each leaf's shape suggesting a different character. Children sort and compare leaves, learn to name a few trees and notice why leaves fall in autumn.
Egg Box Bat Garland
Cutting and painting egg box cups builds scissor control, and making matching wings on both sides is a simple lesson in symmetry. It is also a chance to learn how real bats find their way in the dark using echoes.
Glowing Jack-o'-Lantern Jar
Turns an empty jam jar into a pumpkin lantern and shows the difference between translucent materials, which let light glow through, and opaque ones, which block it and make the face shapes.
🔒 PremiumGhost Story Stop-Motion
Moving a model ghost a tiny bit between each photo and then playing the photos quickly creates the illusion of movement, the same trick used in animated films. Children plan a short story, practise patience and learn how frames per second work.