Circle Painting Art Activity

Bust out the paper cups for a little at-home circle time!

Submitted by
Laura

Collect a bunch of paper cups in different sizes, or TP or paper towel tubes, and encourage your kid to dip the rims into paint and use them as stamps for this art project. He'll learn a thing or two about shapes while flexing his hand-eye coordination and small muscle skills.

Paper cups, empty toilet paper rolls and/or empty paper towel rolls:
So you'll have several different sizes of circles.
Paint
Paper
Paper plates:
One per color.

Pour a little paint onto paper plates, one color per plate.
Lay out a piece of paper and a bunch of different-size paper cups.
Ask your kid to dip the rim of a paper cup into the paint and then press it onto the paper to create a circular print.
Have him do it again and again with all the different cups and different paint until his paper looks like trippy '60s wallpaper.
Then squeeze the cup to shape it into a triangle by pinching three corners into points.
Hand it back to your kid and let him stamp away creating triangular patterns on his paper. Explain the difference between a triangle and a circle.
When he's bored of his isosceles, pinch another cup into a square and have him stamp away with it, again explaining the difference between a square, circle and rectangle.
Feeling ambitious? Try pinching the cup into a more complicated shape, like a hexagon. Or just give your kid a fresh cup and challenge him to shape the cup into a new stamp. A heart? A diamond? An amoeba?
When he's all done, let his creations dry and challenge him again—this time to help you clean up the mess!