We had some friends over last week, and after almost a whole day running around, jumping on the trampoline, dancing, dressing up, playing vets, and chasing chickens by late afternoon everyone need to sit for a bit. When this happens I often get out a giant piece of paper so everyone can draw together, but on this occasion I had a different idea…
Without saying much I plonked a pile of graph paper on the table and some markers, and was pleased to hear some encouraging ‘ooohs’ as the kids each selected a sheet and got to work.
I customised and created my graph paper at incomptech. They have lots of options for graph paper – the regular square kind, trangle, haxagonal, circular, polar and more. I was easily about to select the size of shape I wanted, the thickness and colour of the lines and more. Then it is just a matter of saving them as a pdf file and printing them out.
Using the regular square paper we made simple repeating patterns, checker board designs, we combined squares to make larger pictures and divided squares into triangles and smaller squares and even octagons to make all kinds of interesting images.
The triangles and hexagons also worked well for patterns and pictures. Morgan worked hard to colour an entire sheet of triangles, creating a scene from Eden (a minecraft type game for the ipad)
The circles were great for patterning and the spider webs inspired all kinds of fun.
Even though this was a really simple idea, there was so much creativity happening with lots of incidental maths concepts thrown in for good measure!
Many thanks to Free Range in Suburbia for allowing me to share photos of her gorgeous girl and her awesome creations.
Find more fun drawing activities here.
Debs says
Oh, love this! Thank you so much for sharing where I can print my own graph paper because I was about to ask you where I could get them from! I must get a bunch of this to save for such occasions. Sharing :)
Debs says
haha, ok, I just downloaded their entire range! I’m a bit too excited about this graph paper I think. haha. Thanks again :)
Bek @ Just For Daisy says
I love graph paper too! haha! Looks great Kate!
Kelly says
I’ve never even though of using graph paper like this Kate. Awesome!
Kelly says
What a great art prompt! It is really interesting to see where they take things like this isn’t it :-)
jode says
I had no idea you could design your own craft paper…how fantastic is that (although I fear we may have lost Deb to some for awhile! ;) ) Their creations are just so creative….just loving this idea and what a way to get the kids to calm down after a busy day! Thanks for sharing :)
Bethany @ No Twiddle Twaddle says
I love this Kate! Thanks so much. : )
Jelli says
What a clever idea for art+math unite! My little girl’s still too little to stay inside any kind of line when coloring, but I’m pinning this for future reference. I could even come up with tons of eclectic wall art ideas from this. Thanks so much for sharing, Kate! Can’t wait to cruise around more of your blog.
Jennifer Green says
Thank you so much for the graph paper. I am a third grade teacher and this will be perfect for my class. Thank you for sharing this. :)
Renee @ adventuresathomewithmum says
I love this idea
Thanks for sharing, I’m giving it a go with Dimples this afternoon :)
Kelly @ IdealistMom.com says
What a great idea! I just pinned this and will definitely be trying it :-)
stephanie says
I love this! I used to do this when I was little. Printing and sharing!
Jo Salotra says
Fantastic idea – we did something not quite this organised on a 4 hour train journey – we scribbled and swirled a continuous line all over a piece of paper and coloured in each gap a different colour creating a kind of coloured mosaic pattern!
Elizabeth says
Amazing!!!!!
Now I have something to do with all of my piles of graph paper!
Helen says
I just found your site, and I was interested in the graphing paper art. But it looks like the link is no longer available. Will you be putting it up in the future? Thank you!
katepickle says
The link to the site where I found the graph paper is still working for me.
I used this site – http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ – to create and download the graph paper.