Creative Family Fun

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Terri Thompson

Valentine Watercolor Resist Painting

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Every year, we tend to do a lot of craft projects leading up to Valentine’s Day. This year is no exception.

I’ve got so many great ideas pinned to my Valentine’s Day Pinterest board, but for this project, I wanted to keep things simple.

This Valentine watercolor resist art project was both open-ended and simple. When we were done, the final project was beautiful.

Make beautiful Valentine's Day kid art with a fun technique. These Valentine watercolor resist paintings are a fun process art project for February. #kidsart #ValentinesDay #CreativeFamilyFun

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You only need a few simple supplies to make this beautiful project. The process is easy and the results were stunning.

Make beautiful Valentine's Day kid art with a fun technique. These Valentine watercolor resist paintings are a fun process art project for February.

Supplies Needed

White paper
Oil pastels
Red liquid watercolor
Paint brushes

Make beautiful Valentine's Day kid art with a fun technique. These Valentine watercolor resist paintings are a fun process art project for February.

How to create your Valentine watercolor resist art project

For the first step in the process, we used a white oil pastel to draw hearts, swirls, and other designs all over our paper.

Of course, this led to a lot of questions about why we were using white crayon on white paper since you can’t see it that well. I promised that we would see the magic soon!

Make beautiful Valentine's Day kid art with a fun technique. These Valentine watercolor resist paintings are a fun process art project for February.

Once we finished our Valentine’s designs, we got our our red liquid watercolor paint to make the magic happen. I love using the liquid watercolor because the paints are so vibrant. But, if you don’t have any liquid watercolor paint, you can also use a tray of regular watercolors.

This is my favorite step of the whole process. It’s so much fun to see the hidden designs pop once you paint over them. We simply painted our entire paper red to get the full effect of our designs. The end result is beautiful no matter if your child drew perfect hearts or random designs.

Make beautiful Valentine's Day kid art with a fun technique. These Valentine watercolor resist paintings are a fun process art project for February.

My preschooler created the picture shown above. Isn’t it stunning!

Make beautiful Valentine's Day kid art with a fun technique. These Valentine watercolor resist paintings are a fun process art project for February.

You may also like one of these Valentines crafts:

Monochromatic Collages for Valentine’s Day

Collage Heart Valentines

Stained Glass Window Valentines

Heart Dot Paintings at Gift of Curiosity

Chinese Character Printmaking Project

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The earliest form of printmaking, woodblock printing, originated in China.

Since we’ve been learning about China, I thought printmaking would tie in nicely with learning about Chinese characters.

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We began by reading the book, In the Park by Huy Voun Lee.

The books by Huy Voun Lee are a wonderful introduction to Chinese characters for young children. The book has a mother teaching her son about different Chinese characters while showing him the pictures in the characters.

The book we read introduced 10 different characters, all related to nature. After reading the book, we chose one of the Chinese characters highlighted in the book for our printing project.

Supplies Needed:

Styrofoam tray (if using a meat tray, wash and disinfect before using)
Pencil with a dull tip
Paint
Foam paint brush
White paper

Some of you may have noticed in the first picture that I made one big mistake while doing this project. I unfortunately didn’t have another Styrofoam tray to make a correct version for you. The first step in the process was where we made our mistake. I completely forgot that in printing we would be making a mirror image. Oops! We drew our characters as we saw them, but once they were printed, they were backwards! So, don’t do what we did!

Instead, use your dull pencil to draw a mirror image of your Chinese character. There are some Chinese characters that would look the same either way. Choose one of those characters to make the process simpler. Miss Preschool chose the character for soil, which worked either way. I tried a more complicated character, bird, which ended up backwards.

Once you have your character drawn, use your foam brush to coat the whole tray with paint. We used the foam brushes and got a more even coating. Try for a medium coat of paint, without any lumps.

Turn your tray over and gently press is onto your white paper. Try not to move it once you have it down. Press firmly and then lift up carefully.

Your finished product should look like the one above (except hopefully facing the correct direction). Have fun making your prints. I think a collection of these would be beautiful on the wall!

More printmaking projects:

Still Parenting has an amazing post where they did a printmaking project with yarn and string. I want to try this sometime!

Creating with stamps is an easy printmaking project that even young kids can do. Mama.Papa.Bubba shows you how to create your own simple block stamp.

This was not our first printmaking project. We also created beautiful cityscapes using stamps we made from craft foam and cardboard.

10 Ways to Play and Learn About Polar Animals

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Animals are always a popular subject at our house and the cold, cold winter we’ve been having has made this the perfect time to learn about Arctic animals.

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We learned fun facts about puffins, Arctic foxes, and reread one of our favorite books, The Three Snow Bears.

Here are 10 more fun activities all about polar animals.

Make a simple Arctic animal craft using the free printables from Learn Create Love. (You’ll find a narwhal, polar bear, walrus, and everything in between!)

Do a little polar bear science and find out how a bear with black skin looks so white with this experiment at Sugar Aunts.

Make simple paper plate polar bear masks with Creative Family Fun.

Play Polar Bear Race, a DIY board game from Little Family Fun

Do an experiment to find out how blubber keeps whales warm at Frugal Fun for Boys.

Play with an Arctic snow dough small world sensory bin with Crayon Box Chronicles.

Create sponge-printed penguins with Teach Preschool.

Do a little math and compare the sizes of Arctic animals with Gift of Curiosity.

Play in an Arctic ice sensory bin with No Time for Flashcards.

Play a fun gross motor polar bear game with Sugar Aunts.

Which one do you want to try?

The Three Snow Bears: A Compare and Contrast Game

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One of the most read books in our house over the past month has been The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett.

The Three Snow Bears is a beautifully illustrated retelling of the classic fairy tale, The Three Bears, except this story takes place in the Arctic with polar bears and a young Inuit girl named Aloo-ki.

To extend the story, we decided to play an easy-prep game where we compared and contrasted The Three Snow Bears with Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Before reading the stories, I prepped the game.

I took three sheets of construction paper and labeled them at the top. One was labeled The Three Snow Bears, another was labeled The Three Bears, and the last was labeled Both Stories.

I then took 15 index cards and wrote down several elements of the story. Some were specific to one of the stories and some were elements of both stories. I’ve listed the elements below.

The Three Snow Bears

Boots
Igloo
Aloo-ki
Dog sled
Polar bears

The Three Bears

Chairs
Porridge
Goldilocks
Cottage
Brown Bears

Both Stories

Papa, Mama, & Baby
Beds
Too hot!
Just right!
Bowls

Before playing the game, read both The Three Snow Bears and a traditional version of The Three Bears (we like Goldilocks and the Three Bears by James Marshall).

Once you’ve read the story, hand your child one card at a time. Ask them to determine whether it came from one of the two stories or if it was in both stories.

Have them place the card on the correct sheet of paper. That’s really all there is to it.

This is a simple game, but it helps with reading comprehension as well as learning how to compare and contrast two different stories.

For more learning fun:

Download and print the Goldilocks and the Three Bears mini book at Scholastic.com. Let your little ones color the pictures and put together the book. (Plus, you can use it for this activity if you don’t already have a copy of the book!)

Make a mural all about The Three Snow Bears. Jan Brett’s website has all the pieces you need. Print, color, cut, and create your own mural about the story.

Tell the story with props. Learn Create Love has a free, printable storytelling set for Goldilocks & the Three Bears. Turn them into puppets and let your child tell the story.