Little Cloud Paintings

Have you ever laid in the grass and gazed into the sky to see big, fluffy clouds? Did you see a hat, or a dinosaur, or maybe a shark in those clouds?  This whimsical kids’ art project is a perfect follow up to an afternoon of cloud watching. Or combine literacy with art by reading Eric Carle’s Little Cloud book beforehand!

The simple step-by-step makes the activity easy enough for kids of all ages. And speaking of easy, hop over to become a VIP Plato Pack member so you can get all of the tools, strategies and support you need to reach ALL of your learners.

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Getting Ready

To get this beautiful kids’ art project ready, I gathered supplies for each student:

• One 9 x 12-inch piece of construction paper in various shades of blue, turquoise or purple for the background
• Tempera paint in various colors such as green, blue and white poured into a small paint palette (Mine are from Dollar Tree.)
• Large 1-inch paint brushes
• Optional: Eric Carle’s Little Cloud book (Affiliate link)

Tip: I decided to use colored construction paper so that the art project would have extra color if the background was not covered entirely with the tempera paint.

Creating the Ground

To start the kids’ art project, I had each child paint a curved line across her colored construction paper to represent the ground.

Then, students filled the bottom area with shades of green paint.

Creating the Sky

I had the students choose various shades of blue tempera paint to create the dynamic sky and encouraged them to fill in the area above the green ground.

Creating the Clouds

While we waited for the sky to dry, we pulled out the Little Cloud book and I read it out loud to the kids.

It was a great way to get kids thinking of what shapes they wanted their clouds to be.

When we were through, we used white tempera paint and a large paintbrush to create the clouds.

I encouraged students to paint at least three different shapes on their paper by tapping or hopping their brush around.

It was so fun to see all the creative ideas the kids thought up and the paintings made an adorable masterpiece for kids to take home.  This kids’ art project was definitely a gorgeous hit!

More Inspiration

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