Rainy Day Spring Art Projects

Although there are a lot of projects that you can do indoors on a rainy day, these art projects for kids require some rainy to complete these crafts. These projects work best with a light rain; a downpour will wash the color out of the paper. Kids will need to bring these projects outside and leave them in the rain for a few minutes.

Rainy Day Sun Catcher
Run your hand over a coffee filter so to make it as flat as possible. Color the paper with washable marker. Bring the filter outside and set it on a deck or driveway. Once the paper is wet (which depends on how hard it is raining), bring the paper inside to dry. The water will encourage the ink to seep over the paper. When the paper is dry, tape these disks in a window that gets a lot of sun.

Tie Dye Wrapping Paper
You’ll need white paper towel and washable markers. Again color the paper (it isn’t necessary to cover the entire piece with marker) and set out in the rain for a couple of minutes. You can set the paper on trays (like a cookie sheet), but you want to use the back of the tray, particularly if it has sides, so you don’t trap a puddle of water. Hang or drape the paper so it dries. You can wrap small gifts in the paper, either taping
it closed or wrapping ribbon around it.

Painting with Watercolors
If you have a watercolor palette that has only hard bits of paint in the corners of each section, pop out the paint and break it into tiny pieces. Set the paper on the back of a tray or cookie sheet. Scatter the pieces over a sheet of watercolor paper in a random way or individually place the broken pieces of paint.

Bring outside and allow the rain to mix with the paint. This will take longer than the projects with the washable markers. When you bring the paper inside, you can either dab at the puddles of paint with a scrunched up piece of paper towel or you can sprinkle the paper with kosher salt – when the paint dries, you can brush off the salt leaving behind an interesting pattern.

Some kids fear getting wet (Do they have to change their clothes if they get damp? Will their mom become angry if there is mud on their shoes?). Some parents might view sending their kids out into the rain as a hassle. For these projects kids can run out and back in, with no need to change into boots and raincoat. Of course, while the kids are waiting for the paint and ink to do its thing, you can encourage the kids to run around in the rain, stomp in puddles, and look for earthworms on the surface soil. You could even join them.