Navajo Sand Painting

I have to admit, I tend to shy away from "messy" art projects.  It's not that I'm extraordinarily neat - it's more that I just don't want to have to clean one more thing!  (I am really not fond of cleaning.)

But every once in awhile I take a leap of faith for the sake of my kiddos not being "art project unsocialized".  And this one turned out so well.  Not sure if I was more pleased with their projects or the fact that I stayed calm - even if I did chant, "it can all be cleaned up", a few times.  And clean up didn't turn out to be that bad anyway - no disasters - yay!

We did Navajo Sand Painting.  We looked at some images on the computer to get an idea for our paintings.  The detail was amazing!  So I really encouraged the kids to go simple with their drawings for our first time sand painting.  It took

them a few tries to get their drawings the way they wanted - especially the younger two, as they tried to explain to me what they wanted while I tried to help them draw it.  This was the most difficult part.

But finally we were on to the painting part, which actually turned out to be not as stressful as I thought.   They caught on so well, I even took time to work on my own painting and just let them go with theirs. 

Check them out!  They were so focused and not in a hurry to finish. 

I loved just watching them go!

The process was simple:

Draw your design on thick paper.  It's best to use two lines, like making a path. 

Thin out some glue with a little water.  Paint the glue on one section at a time. 

Sprinkle the sand over the glue.  Shake paper gently to spread sand to all the glue, before shaking the extra sand back into it's bowl. 

And here's our final products!  A success for both me and the kids!

These craft trays from Lakeshore Learning were incredibly helpful.