Easy Snowflake Art for Kids
Make some gorgeous snowflake paintings using this easy crayon resist art technique.
Kids of all ages will love designing their own snowflakes, then using this fun and easy painting technique to make. Starting with a marker or pencil makes this activity easy for little ones to manage, and older kids will love the magic of crayon resist and seeing their snowflakes pop out from the colour.
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Snowflake Crayon Resist Painting
This snowflake art activity is a great way to learn about snowflakes, and have fun mixing colours and experimenting with the crayon resist technique. It’s perfect for kids aged 3+, I recently tried this with an art class of kids aged 4-10 and they all loved it!
Supplies:
- Paper (regular paper works great)
- black marker or pencil
- white crayon or oil pastel
- liquid water colors, or regular water color paints
- large wide brush
Regular paper works fine for this art activity, or you could use water colour paper if you like.
We used liquid water colors with a little water added to get vibrant colors, but regular water color paints work well too, just make sure to add water to the paint and let it sit before use.
How to:
Before you start print some photographs of snowflakes (or you could use our snowflake matching cards) and notice with your kids how snowflakes always have six points, and that they are symmetrical – if you cut them in half, both halves look the same.
Now you are ready to use a marker or pencil to draw some snowflakes on your paper. You could draw one big one, or lots of small ones, or snowflakes in all different sizes!
Using a marker or pencil makes it easy to see what you are drawing and you can add lots of details if you like.
Once you are happy with your snowflakes, draw over the top of them with the white crayon or oil pastel. Make sure you cover up all the lines you have drawn with lots of white.
Next, load up your brush with lots of paint and fill your whole page with color!!
Notice how the paint doesn’t ‘stick’ to the paper where you have drawn with the white? This is why it’s called crayon ‘resist’… and it’s kind of magical!
Tips and Extension Ideas:
- Use lots of descriptive language as your children explore, such as ‘mixing’ ‘resisting’ ‘symmetrical’ etc.
- Allow your children lots of time to explore and experiment and to make lots of snowflake art, the focus is on the magical process of making them, you don’t have to keep all of them when you are done.
- Explain the process of crayon resist as it is happening – how the waxy crayon creates a coating that the paint can’t stick to.
- Try making a snowflake painting with drawing with marker or pencil first, how can you see where you have drawn with the white crayon on the white paper?
- Explain what symmetry is and think about ways you could experiment with making symmetrical images, such as squish painting which creates an image with bilateral symmetry, or using our snowflake pattern mats that show radial symmetry, or try drawing a mandala.
- Deep dive into the science behind snowflakes and watch this fun video, or check out snowcrystals.com
More Easy Painting Ideas
If your kids love painting try one of these fun and easy painting ideas:
- Painting in foil – easy and so much fun!
- Q-tip painting – great for a low-mess painting activity.
- Oil pastel painting – use this magic technique to turn oil pastels into paint!
Or try one of these fun snowflake activities!
