The beauty of cardboard and process art is that anything and everything can be used as a canvas or morphed into something creative. Cardboard is such a versatile material that provides a great surface to paint on. Since it comes in so many different sizes, textures, and shapes it allows the children to explore art in a different medium, use their imagination to think of a range of ways to paint cardboard boxes, and promotes collaboration as the children can work together to paint and talk about what they are creating.
Since the children at our centers are excited for Halloween we decided to honor their current interests and assemble a "Haunted House," with recycled boxes and let them paint with Colorations Tempera Paint from Discount School Supply! This inspired so much excitement and engagement as the children transformed and reinvented these boxes into a spooky house!
When we provide opportunities for a child to paint freely and express their feelings in a visual way it will further help build their social emotional development. Painting allows children to explore emotions and find safe ways of expressing them. Active engagement in the arts yields positive results children internalize and externalize emotions. Researchers tell us that children who participate in arts over an extended period of time show more sophisticated social skills such as sharing and cooperation, reduced shyness and anxiety, and reduced aggressive behavior. Children who engage in arts regularly are better able to control their emotions and express them in productive ways.
Since the social emotional development of a child is the foundation to support all of the other domains when a child feels empowered and confident through painting they will also enhance their fine & gross motor development, hand-eye coordination and control, openness to experiment/take risks with tools provided, further develop their language as they express what they are doing in the process, and continue to have the avenue of using their most powerful capability creativity + imagination.
