Whenever Veronika spots q-tips in the bathroom, she’s eager to play with them. So today we gave into that urge, and used the cotton swabs for arts & crafts instead! Below are four different methods that she and I tested out.

One: Negative Images

For the first craft, you can use any glass pie plate (or baking dish or loaf pan) as the “canvas”. I spread a little tempera paint thinly in the bottom, then handed Veronika a q-tip as her brush. Any lines that your child makes leave a negative image or etching behind.

The idea was a bit advanced for Veronika, but after she’d done some scribbling, she loved seeing the deliberate images I drew for her, like a sun or puppy.

We even tried making a print of it by pressing down a piece of white paper, although it ended up looking more like abstract art.

Two: Color mixing

Cotton swabs are just right for mixing up colors, giving a chance to teach a little about primary and secondary colors! I poured a little of each primary color (red, yellow, and blue) onto a paper plate, and first showed them to Veronika as we named each.

One at a time, we mixed them! Our red and yellow made orange, yellow and blue made green, and blue and red made purple. Now we had a full palette for…

Three: Pointillism

The tip of a cotton swab is naturally suited for making dots (although Veronika practiced making a few swirls, too), which is a great introduction to the pointillist style of painting.

I dotted right alongside her, so pretty soon we had a pointillism rainbow and sun and clouds, with a little blue puppy beneath. Veronika loved adding to the picture I started, making very emphatic dots. My little artist at work!

Four: Counting

For our final q-tip activity, I wrote out the digits 1, 2, and 3 for Veronika. After encouraging her to name each number, I asked her to make the correct number of dots with her q-tip underneath. “Can you make 1 dot?” I asked her. Dot!

She was also able to do this for number 2. By 3, she just started dotting everywhere. But of course preschoolers can tackle this task all the way up to 10, or higher! For an even greater challenge, stamp out a connect-the-dots with the q-tips, then number them and have your child connect the lines.

Which of these q-tip activities does your child like best? Please share in the comments. Many thanks to Hands on As We Grow for all these q-tip ideas!