My girls LOVE to color so we turned these Kid Made Thanksgiving Placemats into something even cooler…Crayon Resist Placemats! I hope to make this an annual tradition.
The first step is to color, having the kids use more pressure with the crayon so you can see and feel a “waxy build-up” on the paper. It doesn’t have to be so hard the crayons break, but the more wax, the better the paint will resist it later on. Allow about 3-5 days start to finish for this project, since it’s a large picture to color.
Using watercolors, paint over the ENTIRE picture, including the background and the coloring. I gave the girls a choice of blue, purple and green water color. It doesn’t work as well with light colors, and black is really too dark and hides their coloring. The wax from the crayon will resist the paint and it makes the finished picture “pop out” a bit. It looks really neat once it dries!
Next we glued the picture to a larger piece of construction paper and they added a few details to their pictures with Sharpies.
Then I asked them to think of all of the things they are thankful for. This was BY FAR the best part of the project. I wrote exactly what they told me, and filled up the entire border of the placemat with their words.
Last step is to get them laminated so they are protected and ready to use at the table! It will be fun to repeat this activity year after year.
Written by Anne