School-Age Special Event: Messy Art Party

Some colleagues of mine had their own messy art parties in the last year or so, and they seemed to be a big hit. SO, of course, I decided to host my own messy art party!

Messy art can be a little intimidating at the library. I mean, we have books! We can't get messy...right? 

I am one of those libraries that does not have its own program rooms. This might be easier if I did, but we still take over the library (or at least parts of it) for programs on occasion. 

I had planned on doing a lot of the activities outside but we got hit with an early cold front so I definitely did not want to be outside today. The only exception was, since it was still sunny out, we had the chalk art outside for kids to drop in and do. For the other activities, we took over some of the study tables close to our storytime area for the program and set up a few folding tables as well to have several stations. I also saved some of our back-dated newspapers to use to cover the tables to make clean up easier.

STATIONS:

1. Ice Cube Painting:
A peer of mine had huge success with ice cube painting. You take ice cube trays, put food coloring in them, fill them with water, and, when the water starting to solidify, put Popsicle sticks in them.

2. Anything but a paint brush:
We have a bunch of left-over tempura paint. To make the station fun and challenging, I had a few items I created to be used in place of a paint brush. 

Bubble Wrap:

Yarn-Wrapped Paper-Towel Rolls:

Pipe Cleaners:

Q-Tips:

3. Coffee Filter Art:
This is a super simple 'messy' art project. You color a coffee filter with markers and then drip water on it to create a tie-dye effect when the colors run. 

4. Bleeding Art Tissue Paper:
I have a ton of bleeding art tissue paper left over from the Name Art craft when we discussing "Thunder Boy, Jr.". I decided it would be a perfect craft to round-out our indoor activities. 

5. Sidewalk Chalk
We have a sidewalk outside of our library. I put out cones to signify where the kids could color with chalk. Then we let them go at it on the sidewalk. 

Notes:

This was so much fun and the kids loved getting messy. Most of the part projects I kept to a minimal messy level, which helped. And all of the activities were easy for the preschool and early elementary kids but still fun and engaging for older elementary kids!