The Art Area is a place for children to explore materials.  Here they can stir, roll, cut, twist, fold, flatten, drip, blot, fit things together and take them apart, combine and transform materials, or fill up whol esurfaces with color, fringes, paste, or paper scraps.  Children use art materials to make things ~ pictures, books, weavings, movie tickets, menus, cards, hats, robots, birthday cakes, cameras, fire trucks.

Big Art Projects

• Provide large appliance boxes and styrofoam packing pieces for children to paint, decorate, turn into houses, robots, dinosaurs, etc.
• Cover an art area wall with large sheets of butcher paper for large-scale painting, printing, and collage-making.
• Clear a tabletop for finger painting.
• Provide rope and large items for stringing, such as paper-towel tubes, plastic pipe fittings, and funnels.

• Paint with oversized paint brushes and rollers on walkways, steps, fences, play structures, and tree stumps.  Hose their creations away if necessary!  Or use "water" as the paint ~ no clean up needed!
• Print with objects gathered from outside, such as sticks, grass, leaves, flowers, stones, bricks, cans, an dtires. 
• Hang a big loom from a tree branch so children can weave in vines, sticks, hoses, long grasses, branches, and twine.

Paper
Construction paper (many colors)
Plain drawing paper, recycled computer/photocopying paper
Graph paper, lined paper
Newsprint
Finger-paint paper
Wrapping, butcher, or shelving paper (large roll)
Tissue paper, wrapping paper, foil
Wallpaper samples
Cardboard and mat board pieces
Cardboard boxes (large and small)
Contact-paper pieces and scraps
Paper plates, grocery bags
used greeting cards, postcards, stationery
Catalogs and magazines (with pictures reflecting the children and families in your program)

Painting and Printing Materials
Tempera paints (many colors, including black and shades of brown)
Watercolor paints
Finger-paints (or liquid starch and soapflakes to add to tempera paints)
Ink pads and stamps
Paintbrushes (small ones for watercolors and large ones for tempera paints)
Easels
jars with lids, squeeze bottles for mixing and storing paints
Plastic plates or food tins to hold paint for printing
Smocks or paint shirts
Sponges, towels, newspaper

Fasteners
Heavy dut staplers, stapales
hole punch
Paste, liquid glue, glue sticks
Masking tape, clear tape
Paper clips, butterfly fasteners
Rubber bands, elastic
Pipe cleaners, wire
String, yarn, ribbon, shoelaces
Needles with big eyes, thread

Modeling and Molding Materials
Moist clay, modeling clay
Playdough (including black and shades of brown)
Beeswax
Plaster of Paris
Modeling accesssories ~ rolling pins, thick dowel rods, cookie cutters, plastic knives, hamburger or tortilla press

Collage Materials
Cardboard tubes, egg cartons, small boxes and cartons
Empty thread spools, clothespins
Wood an dbalsa pieces
Cloth, felt, carpete scraps
Old stockings and socks
Feathers, cotton balls, fringe
Buttons, straws, sequins
Styrofoam packing pieces
Looms, weaving loops

Drawing and Cutting Materials
Crayons (including a range of skin-tone colors)
Block crayons
Colored pencils
Marking pens, markers (of varying sizes)
Chalk
Scissors