Halloween Art!

This year I wanted to try something a little different for Halloween. Every year, we write "Haunted House" stories as our first descriptive narrative. The kids have a blast with the story writing so I wanted some new art to match the theme. I somehow stumbled across Haunted House Coffee Paintings in my search and gave it a try!

This projects calls for the use of coffee (instant coffee crystals) to make different shades of brown. Kids learn about diluting solutions and have fun painting with their teacher's favorite morning drink! :)

It's definitely a challenging and some of my more "Type A" personalities had a difficult time manipulating such a difficult medium. All in all I think I will try it again next year. Some pointers....

With younger ages, be very explicit about mixtures and water to coffee proportions.

Emphasize that they will NOT be able to easily paint details so it is best to paint the picture from a distant view- leave tiny details out!

I gave each student a spoon and choices of paint brushes, small and wide.

Try it yourself first- I had the kids start with their darkest parts first and fade to light. Kids who ignored this tip had a really hard time.

Here are a few samples of what my kids came up with!