Young children love to squirt glue on paper, and they almost always use too much of it. When they are making abstract glue art, that won't be a problem. Give each child a sheet of black construction paper and tell them to make a design with glue. The glue can be applied haphazardly on the paper. Tell the children to keep their hands moving so that the glue doesn't pool. After the glue has dried, children use pastels to fill in the spaces between the glue. The effect is surprisingly dramatic and makes good use of young kids' propensity to apply color randomly.
Scratch art is made with nothing more complex than crayons. Children use bright colors to cover one side of a piece of sturdy tag board or poster board. Once the paper has been covered, children cover the entire drawing with black crayon. No color should peek through. Children then use wooden craft sticks to draw pictures created by the black crayon being scratched away, revealing the bright colors underneath. Scratch art makes a great three-day project, as children can color one day, cover it the next and make the scratch drawing on the third day.
Young children will get surprisingly good results when they make a tissue paper collage, at least if an adult does the cutting. Gather together several sheets of tissue paper in a variety of colors. Cut them into circles, squares or animal shapes. Give the children sheets of construction paper, foam brushes and liquid starch. Show the children how to brush the construction paper as evenly as possible with the liquid starch. The children then apply the tissue paper to the sticky paper. More liquid starch can be applied in order to create layers of tissue paper. Children will enjoy seeing how the colors blend together. Diluted school glue can be used instead of liquid starch.
Making tie-dye baby wipes is one of the cleanest projects a teacher can hope for. All that is required is a box of baby wipes, markers and rubber bands. Children roll up the baby wipes, twisting as they go. They place rubber bands up and down the twisted wipe and use markers to apply color to the rest of the baby wipe. Since the baby wipe is moist, the color from the markers will disperse, creating the tie-dye effect. Children will have fun removing the rubber bands from the wipes to see what design they created with the markers.