Pin Prick Drawing

It began as an experiment, I was going to make a lantern… but then my kids took over and it became something totally different and so much cooler!

I love it when that happens – an idea, becomes an experiment, that turns into something fun, creative, and even educational, something all four of my kids (aged 5-11) enjoyed, and there was barely any mess either!

Pin Prick Drawing

As soon as I started playing around with this simple idea, the kids took it in a totally different direction.

Izzy held my beginning design up to the window saying “that would look cool stuck up on the window with the light shining through it”, and just like that, instead of making lanterns the kids were designing and creating their own images and making sun catchers!

To make your own awesome pin prick drawing you’ll need:

• White paper or scraps of paper for drawing your design on to
• Paper in various colours – stronger, darker colours look best on the window.
• Foam board or a similar surface that you can push pins into without damage.
• Pencil or pens
• Tape
• A large pin, sharp nail, or skewer for making the holes

The first task is to draw a picture or design a pattern onto the plain paper.

Noah drew some great drawings, while the girls and Morgan experimented with ruling lines and regular patterns. We discovered that simple line drawings without too much fine detail came our best, as well as simple, large patterns, but all of our images were interesting to experiment with.

Next we set our little play table up with a big piece of foam ready for all the pricking and poking.

We placed the drawing on top of a coloured piece of paper and taped them both onto the foam to keep them in place.

Now for the fun part… making the holes!

Follow the lines of your drawing making holes fairly close together, but not so close that they just become one big hole!

We tried a few different tools for making the holes – a large headed push pin from the notice board, a thinish nail, and a bamboo skewer. The push pin was easy to use but made smaller holes, the skewer broke easily so we all ended up using a plain old nail!

This was an excellent fine motor work out for Noah. He was using all the small muscles in his hands that he uses to hold a pencil, strengthening muscles and refining skill and control, perfect for my boy who is still working on his pencil grasp.

It was surprisingly satisfying poking the holes, a bit like the feeling you get when popping bubble wrap!

And it was exciting to peel off the top piece of paper with the drawing on it to reveal the holey, pin-pricked, design underneath!

 

Are you looking for more easy, low-mess, art activities that work for a variety of ages? Try one of these fun activities: