Inside: This July make patriotic art with Pointillism by making this USA craft and fireworks 4th of July crafts for kids.
Summer is officially here and my kids are already bored.
Ugh.
A little boredom is okay and a very necessary part of childhood.
But I also love having activities they can easily do in my back pocket so their summer days aren’t filled with whining about the boredom or hours and hours of screen time.
So we use these fun ideas for an old school summer and we use this summer schedule to keep from the summer slide and keep us entertained at the same time.
We make shrinky dink crafts for friends and bake these friendship cookies.
And around every patriotic holiday like Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, and the 4th of July we write letters to soldiers through Operation Gratitude.
The 4th of July is always a favorite part of summer.
Maybe it’s the bbqs or the swimming or the fireworks.
And since my kids also love to paint, I busted out some Q-tips, red and blue paint and a canvas and my old art history book to make Patriotic Art with Pointillism.
What is Pointillism Art?
When I was in college and took the mandated Art History courses, I discovered and then fell in love with Pointillism.
Maybe it’s because it reminded me of those Hidden Magic Eye Puzzles from the 90s.
My professor showed us a tiny, zoomed-in piece of art and all we saw was dots.
Little tiny dots.
Then he zoomed it out to the gloriousness that is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
And once I saw the painting hanging in the Art Insitute of Chicago, I was sold.
The tiny dots that magically turn into gorgeous art is mesmerizing.
I ran across the street from the museum and bought my tiny daughter the board book, Sunday With Seurat
And when my kids were older, we graduated to these kid-friendly art history books on Seurat.
This awesome YouTube Video of Art with Mati and Dada and Seurat is a great way to further explain Pointillism to our kids.
If you have younger kids who don’t have the fine motor skills for Q-tips, get them these Dot a Dot Art Markers and they can create their own art.
And since we love the 4th of July and I love Pointillism, we connected summertime and all things patriotic to pointillism with this patriotic craft made entirely out of dots.
Want more 4th of July books to connect to this project?
Here are our favorite patriotic books:
Supplies Needed for the Patriotic Art Project with Pointillism:
- small canvas or cardstock paper
- Q-tips
- red and blue acrylic paint (tempra paint is fine for the cardstock paper)
- pencil
How to Make the 4th of July Art with Pointillism
1. Draw “USA” on your canvas, pressing lightly.
2. Dip a Q-tip into the red paint and one dot at a time, outline the letters.
If you are using acrylic paint, let your kids know it’s “forever paint” for clothes.
And remind your kids not to smear the paint by using the Q-tip like a paintbrush. Instead, show them how they can make tiny dots close together to make it appear like a line was formed.
3. Continue to fill trace the letters with red and blue dots. Then add a border if you’d like.
4. For the fireworks project, place three dots spread out on your canvas.
5. Starting with one dot, make a curved line of dots out towards the edge of the canvas.
Continue around the whole dots until there are curved lines all around the original dot to look like an exploding firework.
6. Move onto the next dot, using a different color and expand the firework close to your first firework, overlapping a few of the dots.
7. Hang up your finished patriotic art to celebrate the America’s birthday and the 4th of July.
And then you head out and find some fireworks.
While you wait for it to get dark enough, you can read a 4th of July or a Seurat book.
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