Paint Bellows Tree

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Use process-based methods to create colorful tree artwork! The techniques used involve materials such as Paint Bellows, fingerpaint and Squiggle Pipettes, all combined to give your students an exercise in fine motor development while enjoying the result of the final image. 

Age: 3+

Duration: 10 minutes

Learning Objectives: Explore process artwork through fine motor activity. Use Paint Bellows and Squiggle Pipettes to exercise squeeze-and-release motions using various finger coordination. Achieve harmonious effects with 3 different art techniques. Enhance image association through fluidly and unidirectionally moving the pipette to make a tree trunk, spritzing paint to make the tree leaves and pressing fingerpaint onto the paper to make apples. Create results with process-based art!

You’ll Need:

R54460 Squiggle Pipettes

R5419 Paint Bellows

• Fingerpaint in tree colors (green, brown, red)

• Card paper sheet (8.5 x 11″)

• Paint tray

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Educators are always looking for ways to add process steps to their students’ learning activities. Instead of merely focusing on the process, guide students to make beautiful artwork through step-by-step fine motor exercise using several different tools–Paint Bellows, Squiggle Pipettes and their own fingers!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou won’t need many materials to make this artwork! Place the sheet of card paper inside a paint tray. I use card paper in this project to help withhold it shape under the paint.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMix one part brown paint with one part water to make the paint watery for the Squiggle Pipette. To use the Squiggle Pipette, dip the nozzle into the paint, and squeeze the bulb to release all the air. Release the bulb while holding the nozzle in the paint to draw in some of the paint.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATo paint with the Squiggle Pipette, release the paint onto a sheet of card paper. Start from the bottom of the sheet, squeeze out a bit of paint, then draw up the Squiggle Pipette while continuing to squeeze the paint out. This will produce a tree-trunk base for the tree artwork.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAUse the remaining brown paint in the Squiggle Pipette to make offshoots from the main tree trunk. These will form the boughs and branches of the tree. A good technique is to squeeze a bit of paint out from the center of the tree, then draw the pipette outwards from the center to make a wispy, crooked branch.

Add a few lines at the bottom of the tree trunk to form the tree’s roots.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASqueeze a bit of thick green paint into a bowl. NOTE: Do not water down this paint! In order to effectively use the Paint Bellows, you will need to use very thick paint. This helps to achieve the splatter effect better than using watered-down paint.

To use the Paint Bellows, first squeeze the top and bottom of the accordion chamber together. This will release all the air from the chamber.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHold the Paint Bellow taut as you dip the nozzle into the paint, then release the top and bottom to allow the chamber to draw in the paint. You can see that only a very small amount of paint has been drawn into the chamber.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASqueeze the top and bottom of the Paint Bellows together to make the chamber spritz out the paint. The effect will produce multiple miniature dots on the canvas.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAContinue adding more spritzes of paint around the boughs of the tree. Focus on getting students to exercise their finger muscles while using the Paint Bellows.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAContinue filling up that tree space until you are happy with how it looks. Concentrate more green in the spaces near the boughs, so that your artwork mimics the appearance of leaves throughout the tree.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERANow we are ready to decorate the tree. Squirt a bit of red finger paint into a bowl. Students can dip one finger into the red paint.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAUse the tip of your finger to make little dots representing apples (or any type of fruit) on the tree.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAContinue adding dots to emphasize concentrated finger placement. Students should pay attention to the overall balance and composition of their tree artwork, and focus on where placing the dots will make the tree look fuller.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe’re all done!

You can experiment with different types of tree appearances or add more to your painting. However, the core purpose of the artwork is to engage fine motor skills and focus on process as well as result art.

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BIG IDEA: Sewing Stencils Quilt!

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Explore different fine motor techniques such as sewing and tracing with this BIG classroom project! Combine everyone’s artwork into one. Trace recognizable basic shapes using our Fine Motor Skills Stencils and learn a basic sewing method safely with our Plastic Lacing Needles. Check out more about the tutorial below!

Age: 4+

Duration: 20-30 minutes

You’ll Need:

R5601 Plastic Lacing Needles

R58620 Fine Motor Skills Silly Stencils

• Felt

• Yarn

• Marker

• Scissors

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The best part about our Plastic Lacing Needles is that they are rounded at the tip, which means that they are safe and easy to use with a variety of soft fabrics.

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You don’t need much material for this project. The goal of this activity is to encourage students to develop their fine motor skills while creating artwork that’s a part of a larger art piece: a classroom quilt!

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Provide your students with a variety of felt colors. Guide them to think about the scenes or shapes they want to trace onto their felt piece. In the photo above, I’ve decided to make a stormy scene using our raindrop, thunderbolt and bean-shaped stencils to make the clouds! Younger students can trace basic shapes in the stencils kit, such as squares and circles, if they wish.

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You will need to use markers to trace out the shapes. Using pencil will catch onto the felt threads and won’t create an imprint. If you would like students to practice their tracing before transferring their skills onto the felt piece, provide them with scrap paper to trace onto.

The Fine Motor Skills Silly Stencils are designed to help graduate your students from tracing basic shapes and objects to more complex designs. Yellow colored stencils in this set represent easier shapes to trace, such as triangles, squares and circles. Red stencils represent medium difficulty while the blue stencils feature the most complicated designs. You will see that in the following images, I’ve used mostly red and blue stencils. These are best to use when making “scenes” out of the images.

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Once you have traced out the images, get your Lacing Needle and yarn ready! You will use the traced images as guides for sewing.

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Widen the eye of the Lacing Needle to thread the yarn through.

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Make a rough estimate of how much yarn you will need for each traced part. Tie a knot at the very end of the length of yarn. Show your students how this will prevent the yarn from slipping through the felt when making a stitch.

Here’s an image of a basic stitch that I’m using in this project:

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This kind of stitch is called a running stitch. This means that you slide the needle and thread over and under the fabric in one continuous direction.

There are a variety of other stitches you can use to sew up the traced shapes! You can get older students to experiment with these types of stitches.

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BACKSTITCH: The backstitch is made by sliding the needle and thread over and under but instead of continuing the stitch forward, the needle and thread are pulled back into the previous hole before continuing forward. This stitch helps to secure the two pieces of fabric in place, or to repair a bad stitch.

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OVERCAST STITCH: You can use the above stitch to combine students’ felt projects together into one quilt-like wall mural. The overcast stitch is a series of stitched loops. Instead of passing the needle and thread straight to the next hole, the needle and thread are looped around the edge of the fabric and brought through the next hole on the underside of the fabric.

2014-05-14-AniamtionUsing the running stitch, I’ve followed the lines traced out from my chosen stencils. I was also conscious about the color of the yarn I’m using. There are a total of 3 different yarn colors I used to outline the various shapes. You can see in the animation above what it looks like to gradually complete the shape.

Tip: The felt may be a bit stiff in some places, so you’ll need to maneuver the Lacing Needle through. The best technique to do is twist the point of the needle a little bit to the left then to the right to loosen the felt threads.

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Once your students’ stitched pieces are complete, attach them together into a large-scale quilt or tapestry mural! You can either tape the pieces together with scotch tape or sew them with thread. 

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Craft Spotlight: Masterpiece Fingerpaint Frames

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Make a work of art out of every fingerpainting session! Simply slip students’ fingerpaint artwork underneath any one of our R75421 Masterpiece Fingerpainting Frames

Each of the Masterpiece Fingerpainting Frame packages comes with special fingerpaint paper that slips perfectly into each of the frames. Use regular fingerpaint on the paper.

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To enhance students’ sensory awareness, we asked the art campers to close their eyes as they fingerpainted. Many of the campers loved the freedom they experienced with fingerpainting. Instead of painting a specific image, students could simply blend colors together and take delight in getting ‘messy’ without much clean-up needed.

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To make their fingerpainted backgrounds even more intriguing, we dripped a blob of one paint color onto one side of the paper, then took another color and repeated the same for the opposite side.

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This art camper blended similar colors together: Red and orange. To make her painting more distinguishable, she decided to create patterns in the paint with her fingers.

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The frames are die-cut into 6 beautiful designs. Choose from a gecko, butterfly, fish, frog, turtle or bird. The colors your students choose in their fingerpainting artwork will show through the stylized designs. Pop out the die-cut pieces from the rest of the frame. 

To slip the fingerpainted background into the Masterpiece Fingerpaint Frames, locate the tabs on the sides of the frame. Lift the tabs up and slip the edge of the fingerpaint paper in. Secure the paper on all four sides of the frame.

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Try out a variety of different fingerpainted backgrounds! Change up the background to give your masterpiece a new look.

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