5 amazing ways to sponge paint

Image and words: Sara Conway

1 Easy print lolly: these lovely lollies made us feel summery on a snowy day.

All you need is paint and a washing up sponge. Your kids just put stripes of colour on the sponge and then print. It’s that simple!

2 Dab print turtle: sponge printing creates a textured shell pattern.

You’ll need: paint, washing up sponge, paper plate, green paper

1. Flip the plate so your kids are printing the underside.
2. Give them paints to squeeze onto a plate.
3. They dip a sponge in the paint and dab it on the plate.
4. When they’ve done that, lay a clean plate on green paper so they can draw a head and flippers then snip them out (with your help if needed).
5. When the plate’s dry, they glue on the turtle details and draw a face. How fin-tastic!

3 Sponge paint butterfly: a clothes peg and sponge make a perfect butterfly stamp.

You’ll need: washing up sponge, peg, paints

1. Squeeze together the middle of the sponge and peg it so it holds a butterfly shape.
2. Now your kids can hold the peg while they blob paint all over the sponge. It works best if they cover the whole sponge with blobs of paint.
3. Now they use it to print butterflies. Simple!
4. They can paint a butterfly body, draw antennae and add googly eyes.
5. If they want to go again, they can just add new paint onto the sponge on top of the old blobs of colour.

4 Print a chick

It’s so easy to print a chick. Just give your child a sponge and yellow paint and get them to dab a big blob! When it dries, they can add a paper beak and feet, and stick on some eyes. Or they can try drawing on details with felt tips.

5 Swoosh a rainbow

Get your kids to add stripes of colour to the sponge and then drag it along the page in a rainbow shape. They’ll get a rainbow in one easy swoosh!