Painting or drawing at an easel offers a different perspective to the usual creating on a flat surface or table. It also offers lots of opportunities for using shoulder and arm muscles, kids need to develop those muscles to give them support and stability when they write. But what if you don’t have an easel?
Our easel is currently in pieces on the back deck (don’t ask) so today Noah and I made a simple window easel so we could enjoy some painting and creating on a vertical surface.
To make a window easel you’ll need:
- A cereal box, or other similar sized cardboard box
- scissors
- tape
You’ll need a box that is as wide as your paper is, so we taped both ends of the cereal box closed and turned it on it’s side. Now all you need to do is cut a large flap from the front and top of your box. You will end up with a ‘tray’ area to hold your paint containers, and a flap to tape onto the window.
Now just add your paint containers and tape some paper to the window. The box ‘tray’ keeps the paints nice and close to the painting and helps to catch any drips so there is less clean up. We popped a bit of newspaper on the floor underneath too, just in case there were any wayward drips.
We decided to use pastel coloured paints today – we made them by adding a big dollop of white paint into the regular colours and mixing it up to make pink, mint green, pale blue and a lemon colour.
We also decided to go with one of our favourite painting activities – the draw first, paint later activity. So Noah started out with a big fat black marker and filled his paper with drawings first.
And then he added paint.
Monsters, they always make an appearance in his art.
And later a caravan with ‘fifty hundred rooms and things’.
I love listening to him talk about what he is creating as he draws or paints it.
This was a simple, low mess, way to let my four year old paint on and off all day… now I just need to find a way to store all his paintings while they dry!
Do you own an easel?
What is your favourite painting activity?
What a great idea – I love it! I really like the effect of the sunlight streaming through the painting, too. We hang our paintings on a clothesline we strung up in the garage. Gives us lots of room and we don’t worry about drips on the concrete. :)
Katie! What a great idea! I am curious to know what your inspiration was!? Lately I have been stumbling upon tons of useful, creative, cereal box made “things” & this is one of the best! I am already thinking of a few different ways you could “tweek” this & make it so you could paint directly on window, use crayola (or other) Window Markers,etc! Thats the BEST part of homemade/recycled stuff: Opens a World of creative opportunity :D GodBless & HappySummer!