Potato Masher Painting with Kids

Using new tools can always make painting more fun and exciting. Potato mashers are a great one for making prints, especially if you have one with a nice sturdy handle like the OXO good grips masher. I set this out as a creative activity for the boys in the garden.

All you need for potato masher painting is

• Paper or card (we used coloured paper)
• Paint (I would recommend using washable paint)
• Potato masher such as Oxo Good Grips potato masher

 

The potato masher makes great patterned prints on paper and is a great process art activity. Whatever the finished result, it will have a pretty cool effect so the children can concentrate more on the experience and process or exploring the paint with this tool rather than worrying about making their work look like something specific. We normally tend to lean more towards process art than doing very specific crafts. (You can read about why process art is important for kids in this great article from Mum in the Madhouse)

The boys noticed that when they mashed the masher into the paint that it creates bubbles in the paint tray which is quite a cool effect, and sometimes bubbles come through onto the pictures too.

Bubbly paint mashing is lots of fun! Look at Mr R’s concentration!

By the end of the activity most of the colours were all mixed together and we ended up with a lot of green!

This is a really simple and quick activity with very minimal set up. The results look pretty effective by using the potato masher as kids can easily create their own patterns.

 

We cut down one of the pictures for size and framed it for Fathers Day. It will make a very sweet hand made gift, because lots of love and lots of fun has gone into it!

 

*Paints and masher provided by OXO. Frame provided by Asda