It’s time to take down that Christmas tree — but don’t take it out to the curb just yet!  Snip a few branches to use for painting with your kids!

Process art is all about the process of painting with objects of various textures.  There are tons of great things you can use — see Fall Nature Art and Painting with Kitchen Utensils for more fun ideas.

For our winter-themed process art, we used some Christmas tree branches, pine cones, jingle bells, and cookie cutters.  I always carefully choose the colors we use to make sure they won’t just mix to become brown — this time we used blue, green, and white.  L’s favorite objects to paint with were the jingle bells — but after a while, the paint clogged them up so they didn’t really jingle anymore.  My favorite objects to paint with were the cookie cutters.  I think we’ll have to try doing a painting with just cookie cutters in the near future!

Explore different ways of using the objects to make prints on the paper — the Christmas tree branches were fun to slap onto the paper, the cookie cutters were great for stamping, and the jingle bells and pine cones were fun to roll across the paper.  Talk about the different textures of the objects and the different prints they make on the paper.  There’s really no limit to what you can do with process art — just enjoy the process!