Review: Super Fun Art Activities for Kids

If you’re looking for new art activities to do with kids in the classroom or at home, Super Fun Art Activities for Kids by Susan Schwake is a fun place to start.

The book focuses on experiments with drawing, painting, printmaking, paper and mixed media, allowing kids of all ages to explore different media and styles of artwork.

Each “lab” includes information on how to set it up and needed supplies, step-by-step instructions and a “go further” section that suggests other ways to try the lesson (such as doing scribble art with watercolor instead of colored pencil).

There’s also information about an artist and usually one of their art works that relates to the lesson, so you can show your students artists who might work in the same media or a similar style to what is being performed in the lesson.

The book offers a wide range of ideas, including things like still life, painting on small pieces of wood, reverse-color landscapes, found-object printmaking, monotypes, large paper fish, monsters made with paper embellished by texture plates, ink abstracts, using a photograph on a painting and larger than life self-portraits. Each lesson shows kids making the projects, which should help your kids to feel confidence to do ti themselves.

The book also includes a lengthy list of supplies you might want if you’re setting up a new art space and some basic ideas for setting up areas for doing the particular types of art outlined in the book.

These ideas are great for adults, too, if you want to make alongside your kids or just want some approachable art experiences you can try for yourself.

Super Fun Art Activities for Kids is a great reference for adding some different ideas to your art curriculum or for doing on a rainy day at home if you have a well-stocked craft room.

About the book: 96 pages, paperback, 33 projects. Published 2023 by New Shoe Press. Suggested retail price $16.99.

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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