So could or SHOULD kids create art through a recipe?

If you know my aversion to copy cat crafts I’ll bet you are thinking; Aha! I thought you don’t believe in copycat arts and crafts.

Well it’s true, I don’t, but this is not copycat arts and crafts  (even if it does say recipe) since its just a recipe for the ingredients not how to make it.

This activity had a few goal aside from creativity and thinking:

1. I wanted to see what the children could make if they confined themselves to using only exactly what I gave them.
2. It’s partly a reading activity along with the art. Next to each material I wrote the name of the material to help them recognize those words.
3. It’s also a math activity as they have to read the number and count out what they needed

I   only made 3 different recipes like you see here.

What happened was…the children did follow by taking the amounts of stuff they needed and put them on their trays to work with.

However, once they got to their trays, they really just chose from the materials they had to make what they wanted.

The older children’s work was of course, more representational as you see below, but it would be interesting if you told the children they had to use all the materials they took on their plates or trays. That would give them something more to think about.

Be aware also that the pictures below came from different recipes. ( don’t remember which came from which but, you could probably figure it out if you wanted to)