We Love Easy Art Projects

When I first began homeschooling my children over 20 years ago, we did a lot of art projects. Naturally, I taught my children the artistic techniques I had learned in my own youth. One of those techniques was to color a piece of paper with a number of different crayons until the entire page was filled. Then we painted the paper with black paint, and once it was dry, used an opened paper clip to draw designs, which "magically" appeared. You can see the technique demonstrated here.

That kind of project was a lot of fun for my first three children and me, but I've never done it with my youngest, who has Down syndrome. It would take him a looonnnggg time just to color an entire page. Add in the painting and etching, and it would become a multi-day project. But that doesn't mean he hasn't been able to enjoy this technique. His best friend, who also has Ds, gave him a Crayola Color Explosion kit for his birthday last week. He's been having a great time using the "magic" marker to draw on the specially treated black paper and reveal the color underneath. The kit also comes with stencils, so he can quickly shade them in and achieve the same result as any other child, and almost as quickly. For someone who has to work very hard at most of the things he does, this kit has been a real source of enjoyment. His friend's mom is very good at finding cool things for these guys, and she's done it again with this gift.