How about a painted rock craft for your kids?

How to Make a Painted Rock Craft

First, find a rock that is nice and smooth. It can be an oval or round rock, a rock with a flatter top, or even a rock shaped like an animal–it depends what your kids want their rock to be in the end. An oval rock could become a ladybug (easy and looks great!), a flatter rock could become a canvas for a painting like on the rock shown below, and a rock shaped like an animal can become that animal (trickier to do)!

Make sure you wash and dry your rocks before you paint for the best results.

Second, you will need to lay out plastic or newspaper over your work area and maybe toss a painting smock or old shirt over the kids. If you want to leave your painted rocks outdoors, you will need paint that doesn’t not clean up with water. In other words, the kind of paint we usually don’t let our kids paint with!

Third, hand the kids some paintbrushes and let them go to town with their creations! If they are using a permanent oil based paint they may need some tips on how to layer their colours and let the layers dry between coats. Otherwise, let them explore and figure it out–they can come up with some really creative things as well as some really creative solutions to muddied paint problems! And if all else fails, you can go find more rocks (always a good excuse to go for a hike!) or repaint the rocks you have.

Here’s a rock my daughter painted as part of her school’s grade three market (And yes, I had to buy it back from the school for $2, but the money went to a good cause–a charity–and it was a ton of fun for the kids to learn how to sell their wares and for me to go shopping!):

Enjoy!

How about you? Have you and your kids painted rocks? Any tips? Ideas? Suggestions? Comments? I always love to hear from you.