Activities with Kids: Painting old T-Shirts

I wish I could take credit for this activity, but it was completely the kids’ idea.

Randomly, they asked to paint t-shirts.  Did they see it on a craft show? Maybe, but they didn’t say and I didn’t ask.  The activity kept them busy, they were happy and they were exercising their creative skills.

To set up this activity, you simply need an old, plain shirt.  For us, this is easy to find, especially because all of our kids have those t-shirts that they wear at home but not out in public because of staining from school crafting or food, am I right?

I set out the T-shirts on the table and placed a square piece of cardboard between the front and the back of the T-shirt to prevent bleeding through. I used acrylic paint because that’s what I had around (no idea if it will ‘wash’ or not) but you can buy special T-shirt paint at the store which wouldn’t be as thick as it dries.

They wanted to free paint on the shirt, but because it’s not a flat, stable service, this usually means the ‘picture’ or letter they are trying to paint doesn’t come out clearly, so I made stencils for them to use instead (they still did free painting, then got mad when it did exactly what I said and wasn’t working well 😉

Then, let them paint! Have fun!