Shape Art; Painting with Toilet Paper Rolls

Painting activities are always simple art activities I can pull together easily and the kids really enjoy them.  We’re always on the lookout for new ways to play with paint, like our glow in the dark painting or our painting with pipe cleaners. This week I used toilet rolls for some shape printing!

Shape Art: Painting with Toilet Paper Rolls

If you’re like me then you have a stack of toilet paper rolls sitting around just begging to be used in this activity.  If you only have one or two sitting around don’t fret 😉 just cut you roll(s) in half and tada you have double the toilet roles to create some shape art with! Plus sometimes the smaller halves are easier for smaller hands.

Set out some paint, bend your toilet rolls into the shapes you want (we ended up with a pentagon, square, triangle, circle and oval), and let the kids go to town!

Each of the girls loved this, they traded toilet roll shapes back and forth and were very focused on getting their shape art just how they wanted it.  We ended up with about three masterpieces per kid but as long as they were having fun I’m not one to tell them they are done after one sheet if they want to continue.

I was surprised that there was the only a tiny bit of finger painting that happened during this art project (with my messy play loving group no finger/body painting is rare!), the girls were very focused on making their shape art and they wanted to be able to see all of the shapes they made.

(that ^ was seriously all of the finger painting!!)

What have you done with toilet rolls? 

Want even more craft ideas to use up that stash of toilet rolls? Check out these awesome heart shaped binoculars from Happily Ever Mom or these fun and silly monsters from P is for Preschooler!