Firework Night is coming round again. Fireworks never seem to lose their fascination for children (big and small!). Here are some ideas for firework based art activities for you and your young people to try out.
I can clearly remember firework nights when I was a child: wrapped up warm, my dad lighting fireworks in the back garden, mum giving us sparklers we would wave around leaving our names written in a silver trail in the air for a second or two. We loved it! And youngsters today still love it. Every year I’m asked if they can do firework pictures or firework colouring. So here are a few firework art ideas you can use in your setting.
You Tube Videos
First and foremost you need to be sure that everyone knows what you mean when you are talking about fireworks. It’s easy to assume that everyone has seen them – but maybe they haven’t. I think many more people go to displays now rather then having them in their back garden, but not everyone will have done that. Public displays are cold, busy, expensive and noisy places that are not user-friendly for everybody. A you tube video is a good way of having a look at fireworks and reminding everyone how they look and sound. A quick search will reveal lots of firework videos including this 10 hour one [10 Hours] Fireworks NORMAL SPEED – Video & Audio [1080HD] SlowTV – YouTube which should provide plenty of inspiration!
Hands-On Art Ideas
Ball Painting – All you need for this activity is a tray or shallow cardboard box, some brightly coloured paint, a small ball or two (table tennis or golf ball size) and some dark sugar paper – ideally black or blue. Simply put the paper in the bottom of the box, squirt a blob each of 3 colours of paint in different areas of the box, pop the balls in and roll them around. I would suggest you limit the amount of time spend rolling the balls around as the paint will inevitable mix up after a while and lose its brightness. Also make sure the young persons name is on the back of the paper when it goes in the box so you know who it belongs to later :).
Glittery Fireworks – If you have glitter it makes a fabulous twinkly firework picture on dark sugar paper. If there’s not much glitter to go round the pictures don’t have to be large. Postcard sized can be very effective especially if you are displaying lots of them. Just dab PVA glue onto the dark card or paper, sprinkle the glitter over and shake the excess off (onto newspaper so you can use it again). Glittery blobs are effective but try spreading the glue into a spider shape too and capturing an exploding firework!
Digital Art
Tate Kids – Tate Paint is a great online art resource to explore. It has so much to offer. I found a digital version of the PVA and glitter art here Tate Paint | Tate Kids which entertained me. You can select a black background, draw on your glue and then sprinkle your glitter. There’s a great sound effect as the glitter puffs out too. Drawings can be saved and then printed out.
Also on Tate Kids is Tate Draw. There you can find invisible drawing which is great way to make a sparkler style picture. Using the invisible drawing program you can select a black background to replicate a night sky. There are 6 pencil colours to choose from and you simply hold down the mouse button and move the mouse to draw. As you move the mouse you can see the trail of where your pencil travels but the lines don’t stay visible on the page – just like using a sparkler. To the right of the program screen is an eye which you can click on to see your picture. Once you have finished drawing you click on the tick and all of your picture is revealed. From there you can choose to save your picture (and then print it).
Colouring
Many youngsters still enjoy good old-fashioned colouring-in with pencils or felt pens. There are lots of free-to-download pictures available on the internet that you can find with a few minutes searching. Here are a few sources of printable fireworks pictures I have found:
coloringhome.com – has a few to choose from, some obviously have an American theme but there are some useful images there.
printabulls.com – have a lovely selection to choose from. Again there are 2 or 3 that are specifically USA but there are still plenty of super images to print and colour.
craftingagreenworld.com – has a wide variety of printable fireworks colouring pages showing scenes from displays, cascade fireworks, cityscapes with fireworks, lakeside fireworks…the list goes on.
I hope these few simple ideas have given you some inspiration for some fun fireworks art. If you have any great ideas for fireworks art we’d love to hear from you.
