Marker Painting

If your kids are anything like mine, they love markers. They may not, however, love putting the caps back on. If that describes your house, you may go through a lot of markers. This activity will breathe new life into those markers-and it's pretty fun too.

What You Will Need for This Art Activity:

• old dried out markers
• paper
• a small container of water

Making Art with the Dried Out Markers

A fun way to introduce your child to this activity is to try to draw on the page with the marker. Show your child how the old markers write. The colors will be faded and unimpressive. Dip the marker into the cup of water. The pigments from the marker will begin to color the water. (Seeing the effect on the water is almost as much fun as creating art!) Now draw on the paper again. The color is more vibrant and beautiful.

Your child will enjoy drawing amazing colorful designs with their "painting."  However, I think that coloring the water with the markers is just as much (if not more) of a draw.  You could provide your child with three markers in the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) as well as three cups.  Dip yellow and blue in one cup to make green, yellow and red in another cup to make orange, and red and blue in the last cup to make purple.  That would be a neat way to involve some science in this process art activity, although for small children like preschoolers and toddlers simply experimenting with the markers on their own is plenty of science.

Little M. absolutely loves this simple activity. We keep a zip top baggie full of dried out markers in our art supplies so that she can do it on request (she asks for it about once or twice a week). 

 

Hopefully, this idea will help you get a little more use out of your markers (and help you save a little bit of money on art supplies)! How do you make your arts and craft supplies stretch a little further? Let me know down below in the comments. And don't forget to share this article if you found it helpful.

If you are looking for more process art activities check out Butterfly Symmetry Painting, Rain Splatter Painting, Wind Painting, and Seed Painting