Paint fireworks with your kids in this creative, process art project inspired by the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Explore colors and build fine motor skills. Plus, help your child explore the world creatively.

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*Thanks to this post on Pinterest for the idea to use spray bottles to make art for our group art project. If anyone knows who made that original post, please let us know, so we can properly attribute them. Currently the pin links to a bottle selling website.

How to: The Artwork

Supplies:

Kitchen sponges
Washable tempera paint (We love this kind!)
Paper plates
Pipe cleaners twisted together to make a firework shape*
Canvas boards or paper

Directions:

Start off having the kids using the sponges to cover the canvases completely in purple and black paint. They can stamp the sponges down to get a textured look. Also, they can mix the black and purple together as much as they want. Because it creates a cool night sky background. While the background dried a little, we went on to do our group art project and talk about fireworks. About 15 minutes later, we went back to our painted canvas boards. Next, we dipped our pipe cleaner fireworks into yellow paint. Then, we stamped the pipe cleaners onto our canvas boards to make fireworks!

*To make the pipe cleaner firework stamps, I first took 6 pipe cleaners and twisted them together, leaving about 3 inches untwisted at the bottom. Second, I spread the untwisted parts of the pipe cleaners out into a flower shape. Finally, I cut off the excess twisted handle, so they’d be easier for little hands to use. And that’s it! You have your stamps!

How To: The Program

My Young Artists class allows 2-5 year olds to explore art and engage the senses to help them understand the world around them. Exploring famous artists and their work allows kids to see that they are capable of making beautiful, creative artwork. Plus, exploring famous artists provides a unique way to teach children about basic art techniques.

Group Activity:

Since we were making firework paintings, I thought I’d show the kids another way to make fireworks with paint. First, I filled plastic spray bottles with washable glitter tempera paint. Second, I laid out poster board pieces on the floor. Finally, I let the kids spray the poster board pieces with the spray bottles. They loved it! (It’s a good thing we used washable paint because it got a little messy!) Look at those cool fireworks they made!

Group Story:

The kids’ were too active today to sit down for a story, but I had this one picked out. Everybody loves Daniel Tiger! For your little ones, it might work out to read this cute book, Daniel’s First Fireworks. I’m sad because I couldn’t find any picture books about James Abbott McNeill Whistler 🙁 Oh well. What we did do though is watch a portion of Walt Disney World’s firework show on YouTube. Those kids were HOOKED! They oohed and aahed at all the right places. One little girl even started dancing to the music! Here’s the exact video we watched. (I started it at about 1:40 and let it play for about 3-5 minutes. At the end of the class, I turned it on again, and the kids came back to watch about 5 more minutes.)

Here’s the art piece that inspired us to create these fun firework pieces.

Individual Art:

As I mentioned above, I had the kids use the sponges and the black and purple paint to cover their white canvas boards completely. And then I had them do the spray painting and watch Disney’s fireworks. By then, the paint had dried a little. So, when they added their yellow fireworks, using their pipe cleaner stamps, you could see everything come together!

At the end of the class, the young artists were happy, the young artists’ parents were happy and the young artists’ librarian was happy, so it was a successful morning in Young Artists! Woohoo!

Fireworks Painting Inspired by James Abbott McNeill Whistler