I love it when a kid's art project doubles as a fine motor activity, like this Q-Tip Star Art. Painting with Q-tips is a fun way for kids to experiment with art and strengthen their small hand muscles at the same time.
You can learn How to Dye Q-Tips and practice Q-Tips and Straws Fine Motor Skills for an extension to this activity.
You will need:
- Black construction paper
- White crayon or white colored pencil
- Yellow and white paint
- Small cups for paint
- Star template (at the bottom of this post)
- Scissors
- 2 q-tips
Once you print out our free star template, (just one of our many free printables and worksheets) cut out the stars and trace them onto black construction paper. The easiest way to do this is with a white crayon or white colored pencil. Trace as many as you'd like. I've included a few different sizes. My kids would have had a hard time with this step, so I did it myself.
Add a few squirts of white and yellow paint to small cups. Give your child the paper with the stars, the paint cups and provide a q-tip for each cup. I demonstrated how my kids could use the q-tip to create dot painted stars. Your child might just use the q-tip as a paint brush and not paint dots. That's fine too. It's about process over product.
My four year old started by dotting the outline of the star with her painted q-tip.
Once the outline had been painted, my daughter filled in the rest using dots of paint.
Dot painting with a q-tip requires a level of fine motor control. I was surprised to see my daughter holding her q-tip in a different manner than she grips her pencil, but holding it this way gave her more control over her painting.
This kids art project would be a great addition to a space study or unit. My kids just had fun painting in a new way!
For more kids art projects with q-tips check out:
Contact Paper Crafts with Q-Tips
Heather A says
What a fun and simple idea for the kids to enjoy! Pinned and sharing on Facebook this week 🙂