25 Engaging Art-tivities With only 5 supplies!

25 engaging art activities with only 4 supplies! Activities that only use crayons, markers, tape, chalk and paper!

P.S.- Did you know that national crayon day is March 31st? The perfect time to celebrate creativity at home!

Supplies:

-Crayons
-Markers
-Paper
-Tape
-Chalk (Don’t have chalk? You can make your own chalk paint by mixing 1 part water to 1 part cornstarch [flour is thinner, but works too in a pinch] with a few drops of food coloring.)

It’s Nice to Have:

-Construction Paper
-Fancy Coloring Pages (Here are some free coloring sheets from Crayola.)
-Scissors
-Pain Brushes (fingers can totally be used if you don’t have these!)
-Paint
-Painters Tape
-Hairspray (to keep chalk from transferring off of an art project)

Warnings:

-There is always a slight chance of staining when you’re making colorful art! So make sure you’re wearing things you can get messy in and cover your surfaces appropriately.
-The chance of staining or indenting your fence or sidewalk is very slight, but is possible. I’ve never seen anything that a power washer hasn’t taken care of though in over a decade of pre-school teaching.
-Remember that this art is about being creative and fun. The process of creating rather than a pretty end result.

Engaging Art Inside

1- Weaving Paper: Cut (or bend and rip) colorful or colored paper into strips and weave them together to make a placemat. Tape together the edges.
2- Illusion or Alphabet Art: Older kids can look up illusion art tutorials, like how to draw a 3D hand with just lines. Younger kids can make alphabet art. Draw all the letters of the alphabet scrambled up on a page, then create a picture out of it.
3- Tape or Shapes with Chalk: You can cut out shapes, or make a shape with tape and draw over it with chalk. Lift up the tape or shape very carefully, and there should be a beautiful outline. You can gently hairspray the chalk from a good distance to keep it from falling off or smearing. Cut out butterflies, tape crosses, or imitate a stained glass window with painters tape.
4- Make a Gratefulness Chain: Cut up a whole bunch of colorful paper or paper that you have colored and make a gratefulness chain. Each strip of paper can be taped together to make a chain. Everyone writes on thing they are thankful for on a link every day and you can add it to the chain each day.
5- Tear Art: Eric Carle’s been very open about how he uses collage art for his stories, he paints paper and rips or cuts it apart to make a new picture. This is fun for every age. Even our toddler loves ripping paper and gluing it to another piece of paper.
6- Make a Card: This is a wonderful time to sit down together and make handmade cards for loved ones, for community helpers, and for friends.
7- Write and Illustrate Your Own Story: (Or extend one of your favorites!) A good way to do this is by creating blank comic strip squares and filling them in.
8- Make a Paper Sculpture: Younger kids can make a 3D building using paper and tape, then color the paper around the sculpture. Whereas older kids might be more interested in learning some origami.
9- Doodle in Dots: Make an entire picture using only dots. (For younger kids, you can make a dot-to-dot for them). It’s a type of art called pointillism. It’s fun and time consuming.
10- Directed Drawing: There are hundreds of tutorials online. Looking up how to draw something, or specifically directed drawings, can be hours of fun.
*- Scratch Art– You can cover a page with colorful markers, then draw over it with a dark crayon and scratch a design out. However, it is much more colorful to cover a paper with bright crayon art, paint over it, and then scratch a design out of the dried paint. With both of these projects, it takes up a lot of color and doesn’t always turn out the way you want. Hence it being an extra suggestion.

Engaging Art Outside

11- Make a Game with Chalk: Our favorite games to draw outside with chalk are hopscotch and targets for waterguns. You can draw obstacle courses, game boards and tracks as well.
12- Still Life: Take out a clipboard or a book, tape the top of a blank piece of paper to it. Choose something outside to try to copy and draw.
13- #Chalk Your Walk– It’s popular to use tape and chalk to make a stained glass scene on the sidewalk or fence right now, they turn out beautifully. You can also leave encouraging messages or create photo ops on your walk.
14- Leaf Art: You can make rubbings with crayons, leaves and paper. Or you can make a picture with the leaves and other little things you find on a walk.
15- Rainbow Rain Art: Make a thick rainbow with crayon, draw thin short lines of rain over it with maker. Drizzle drops of water over those lines. There are lots of other ways to make color mixing rainbow art with water and markers as well.

Engaging Art Using Different Perspectives

16- Secret Messages: Using printer paper, draw your secret messages (a great way to practice spelling or sight words!) with white crayons. Then draw over it with markers to reveal the message!
17- Be a Michelangelo:This famous artist painted a lot of the Sistine chapel on his back looking up. Tape paper under a chair or table and have fun drawing upside down!
18- Pendulum Paint: Use tape to make a small rope that attaches to an open marker. Hold the string over paper and try to design something with the suspended marker. You can also make spin art by putting a marker through a cd, and spinning the cd around.
19- Fold Art: This can be done with chalk or paint. Create half of something symmetrical- like a rainbow or a butterfly, and then fold the paper over and push the pages together. Gently fold it back and enjoy the design you’ve created.
20- Shadow Art: Take some toys outside when it’s sunny, or some big paper. Trace the shadow of your toys, or of something else outside with a bigger sheet of paper, like a tree or flowers.

Engaging Art with Water

21-Spelling with Chalk: Chalk is a fun way to practice those painful spelling and sight words. It’s more fun to draw pictures on the sidewalk or fence and then write the word above it. Another way to make this fun is spelling the words (or melting the chalk words) with water guns.
22- Paint with Ice: Freeze some ice cubes with food coloring, pop them out outside and you have some fun ice paints! Can be done on the sidewalk or on a piece of paper.
23- Plastic Prints: Have some intricate adult coloring pages, fun quote coloring page, really- any page will do! Grab a plastic baggie of some sort, grocery or ziplock, color a few circles with markers on them. Wet the plastic enough that the colors are swirling slightly. Then gently put the coloring page down over it. Tada- beautiful watercolor print!
24- Color Mixing Experiments: There are too many options to choose just one here. From coffee filter butterflies to the walking water experiment- Pinterest has got you covered with a ton of these fun experiments. The ice cube ones take a while and are super fun!
25- Make Chalk Paint: Have you drawn with chalk everyday for the past week? Try mixing it up with some chalk paint! There are a few ways to do this. You can make your own by mixing 1 part water to 1 part cornstarch [flour is thinner, but works too in a pinch] with a few drops of food coloring. Or you can make puffy paint with a little bit of crushed chalk, a few drops of dish soap, and 1 part water to 1 part flour or cornstarch.
*) Check out Banyan Tree Art on Pinterest. Though most suggest pastels, it can be done with just crayons, markers and salt. Draw a thick brown or black tree outline on the top two thirds of a page and fill in between the branches with bright colors. Have it reflected lightly in the water on the bottom third of the page. Paint over the water section with water and a sprinkle of salt and it looks like a river.

Art Ideas With Other Basic Household Items

26- Pulled String Art, or painting with string
27- Marker Transfers with a foam plate
28- Crayon Melting Art (one of my personal favorites!)
29- Paint with Water Guns or Spray Bottles
30- Make Play-Doh
31- Paint with Toys (like cars or marbles)
32- Draw on Foil (permanent markers are especially colorful)
33- Paper Rolling with Glue (you can make beads this way as well)
34- Paper Plate Animals or Sock Puppets
35- Paint with a Fork

What to check out next

We hope you enjoyed these fun and simple crafts!
-You might also be interested in our post on 8 Sensory Activities with Books to Go With Them!
–20 Quick Isolation Tips for families.
–10 Recycling from Home Activities.
–5 Lessons from Frozen 2 with a parent review, activity, and discussion questions.
-Over 50 family friendly streaming suggestions.

Looking for reasonably priced art supplies?! We would love for you to shop our affiliate link below, but also check out our personal favorite art supply store- Harepin Creative! Quality products at a reasonable price shipped straight to you- shop here!

And find some more art supplies here!

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