Contact Paper Window Art

Young Toddler +

Contact paper window art is one of our favorite rainy day activities.  While you can use foam, paper, and a variety of other things on contact paper for window art, tissue paper is by far my favorite.  It really just glows if there is any ambient light outside (in all the days pictured it was gray/rainy out) and tissue paper comes in such vibrant colors as well that you just really can't go wrong!  Oh, and a good pack of pretty rainbow tissue paper can be found at Michaels as well, though I did spy some on my last trip to the Dollar Store.

In the first photo, S was a bit younger, so I opted for precut shapes.  If you have a younger toddler, it can be a good discussion of which shapes are which.  You could even structure it as a mini-scavenger hunt ("can you find the red circle?").  S already knew her shapes and was actually calling out requests to me for this project.

Now that she's a bit older and working on scissor skills, I took the cue from Valentine's Day to teach her how to cut hearts from folded paper (it is a bit like magic to a 3 year old to unfold the paper and find a heart!).

One of her very own cut out hearts!  Beautiful work, if I do say so myself.  :)

 S is also a pre-reader and working on sounding out three and four letter words, so I cut out all the letters to the word "love" in honor of Valentine's Day and scrambled them.  I left it to her to sound out the word and figure out the right order.  She carefully made the sound of each letter in the word, then searched for it and put it in order on the contact paper.  It may be a little backwards, but hey, for a 3 year old, I'll take it!

One or two of the hearts up there were the ones I'd demonstrated for her, but all the rest are hers!  She was especially proud of the giant heart.

The finished product!

Another window art activity that we've done in the past is one where I start, and she finishes.  This is one we've done a few times - I cut out two kittens, and tell her that they are sad because they need toys to play with.  She then scouts the house for items that are small and would stick and "creates" toys for the kittens.  We've also done one where I cut out a tree trunk and she cuts and adds the leaves to the tree.  The cats are cut from a foam sheet.

And lastly, my favorite kind of window art is the tissue paper stained glass.  S doesn't yet have the patience to fill all of a space with paper yet, so we decided she would do all of the paper cutting and some of the sticking, and I would help her finish.

We use tissue paper for other art projects as well, but this is definitely my favorite way to use it!  So pretty!  And though we've left the contact paper up for several weeks at a time, we've never had any trouble with it leaving residue on the windows that doesn't easily wipe off with window cleaner.

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.