I have made homemade paintbrushes with kids in summer day camps but never with my own kids. We’ve used lots of things that aren’t paintbrushes to paint but we haven’t made them ourselves. Now that my son is a little older I thought it was time to try. My daughter who is four needed a lot of help making the brushes but she loved painting with them, my son on the other hand needed very little help creating the brush but after he confirmed he could paint with it he was done. This is fine, different children will connect to activities differently. They were both being creative throughout and that was the goal.

Gather your materials. You will need some popsicle sticks, elastics ( we used small hair ones and regular rubber bands), craft supplies like feathers, sponges, fake flowers, plastic bags, foam sheets, ribbon, pipe cleaners… I just grabbed all the scraps we had in the playroom. You will also need a pair of scissors for each child as well as paint, and paper to test them out.

Start by setting everything up. I rolled out a long line of paper and I am glad I did because my daughter went to town testing every brush out and mixing paint colors.

Invite the children to check out all the materials and show them how to attach them to the popscicle sticks. My son could do this solo but my daughter needed a lot of help.

Check out their creations! My son was so into making his, he even wanted to add netting to the handle for a grip. I loved seeing him get really into it.

My daughter wanted to use everything pink which meant a sponge and pipe cleaner.

Time to paint! They were so excited to see they really worked.  I loved all the squares!

After her brother was done and playing soccer she was adding more paint to the plate and going back to create another brush. 

She kept painting and painting!