Traffic Light Inspired Action Paintings | Teacher Tuesday

Hey y’all!

This post is coming up a little later than I would have liked, but unfortunately I’m not feeling 100%. Over the weekend, I was in a bicycle accident, and long story short…I broke my hand. I’m still getting used to this cast (which is why I skipped Sunday’s No Repeat Work Wear Challenge post), but I figured it’s been a few days and decided to try to post today.

I know…I’m that loser blogger that doesn’t schedule posts in advance.

Anywho! For today’s Teacher Tuesday, I wanted to share a quick art project my class completed about two weeks ago. We’re learning about similarities and differences, and we were exploring the different ways we come to school. Most of my students come by bus or car, so I wanted to base our art project on those vehicles.

During circle time, we had a discussion about road safety. We talked about traffic lights and what the colors mean. Then I showed them what were were going to be doing at the art table.

We were going to make traffic light paintings with cars! We talked about what colors we see in the traffic lights and what kinds of vehicles drove on the road.

We talked about how an action painting means we don’t necessarily need to use paint brushes. I showed the class that we would be using toy cars as our paint brushes, and they got super excited. If theres one thing my class loves, it’s definitely cars.

Here’s what you’re gonna need for these paintings:

cardstock or some other sturdy paper
paint in green, yellow, and red
toy cars and buses

That’s it! I love art projects that don’t require lots of prep work. Sometimes, I really don’t have the time to prepare a lot of stuff, so it’s nice to be able to throw something together with things you have laying around the room.

So how do you make these paintings?

Drip red, yellow, and green paint directly on the paper.
Give the student a toy car.
Let them go to town!

Again, easy peasy. Nothing too complicated, but the kids were incredibly engaged in the activity. It’s great seeing my class focus on something for more than 2 minutes, and they were so proud of the final result.

Obligatory pictures of the process!

This was such a fun art project for my class, and they look wonderful on our gallery wall. Most of them muddled the colors together into brown, but you can still see the remnants of the red, yellow, and green they started with.

Tip: Use cars with a variety of wheels so you can compare the marks when then the paintings are dry.

And that concludes another edition of Teacher Tuesday! I hope you enjoyed taking a quick peek into my classroom. I may not be able to get another education post up next week due to this dumb broken hand, but I’ll do the best I can.