My son and I recently found a cool way to paint with rubber bands. It is one of those painting ideas for kids that they will want to do again and again.We found it while looking through a cool book by Mary Ann F. Kohl called Action ART: HANDS-ON ACTIVE ART ADVENTURES (Bright Ideas for Learning (TM)) that I was sent to review and explore.

The book mentioned that boys would look at the rubber bands and be more than ready to snap them. (In the book this activity is actually calls this painting technique snap painting.) I set out the cookie sheet with rubber bands, paintbrushes and paint for my son to discover.

At first my son wasn’t excited about doing a paint project. It just wasn’t a painting kind of day. Then all of a sudden I heard the rubber bands start to be plucked and strummed.  Mary Ann was right the rubber bands were a hit.

After we put paint on the rubber bands,  the paint started to spatter and fly onto the paper. This painting activity was declared to be very cool. Time and time again paint was reapplied to the rubber bands and spattered on the paper.

It is hard to say whether it was the ability to make paint fly or the noise the rubber bands made that made this one of those painting activities that we will be doing again.

As my son explored ways to move the rubber bands, he found several techniques that really worked well and created a lot of noise.

Here is a list of them:

• Strumming the rubber bands from first band to the last.
• Lifting a rubber band up with the inside of  one of your fingers and letting it bounce back down.
• Lifting two rubber bands up with the inside of two fingers and letting it fall back into place.
• Tapping the rubber bands with a number of fingers at the same time.
• Bouncing a whole hand on the rubber bands.
• Bouncing both hands on the rubber bands.

Applying Paint Hints:

• Applying the paint with a narrow brush seemed to work best. When the paint was applied with a wider brush, paint always seemed to spatter on the paper.
• We used a different paintbrush for each paint color. It kept the paint from getting mixed up when it was reapplied.

There are over 100 painting ideas for kids in the book Action ART: Hands-On Active  Art Adventures . After seeing the fun my son had painting with rubber bands I can’t wait to try more of the ideas.

What is your children’s favorite way to paint? Leave me a comment sharing their favorite way of painting below or on my Facebook page.