This dot-to-dot art challenge for kids is a great way to build concentration and fine motor skills while creating a beautiful artwork.
Updated March 2025
Did you ever do a painting with your child and before you knew it, it was one big brown moosh?
Yup, I’m familiar with that too.
The dot-to-dot art challenge is a great way for kids to build concentration and fine motor skills while creating something beautiful.
Keep reading to see how it’s done.
Dot-to-Dot Art Challenge for Kids
MATERIALS
- paper (thick paper like watercolor paper is ideal, but any paper will do)
- masking tape
- tempera paint
- paint brushes
INSTRUCTIONS
- Prep your paper
Tape your paper down with masking tape creating a border around each side. This will make the perfect frame when your painting dries.
- Add your dots
An adult or child can squeeze about 20 drops of paint onto the paper.
- Do the challenge!
The artist’s job is to cover the entire paper with color without letting any two colors mix. In other words, blue can’t touch red and red can’t touch yellow. They can get really close but only the same colors or dots are allowed to touch. We said only the same colors can kiss because they love each other so much.
I demonstrated the challenge on my own paper before the kids got started. I showed them how the pink traveled slowly all over the paper to kiss all the pink dots and sometimes it had to jump over a bridge (a line of a different color) to get to another pink dot.
When these 4 year olds got working you could here a pin drop. The concentration was intense with the occasional kissing sound as pink touched pink and blue touched blue.
- Let dry
When all the white is covered on your paper you can peel the painters tape off the sides of the paper to create your frame. Set it aside to dry. You can also peel it after your paint is dry. It’s always very satisfying to see that perfect frame.
*Note: If your paper is too thin the tape may rip as you pull it off, therefore I recommend using a nice watercolor paper that can hold under the tape without peeling or ripping.
That’s how we did our dot-to-dot art challenge. This was such a success I tried it with different age groups on canvas with neon acrylic paints. It worked really well and was so interesting to see the difference between the 2’s, 3’s and 4’s work. The process and results were pretty fantastic.
If you like this idea you might also like these family portraits that are great for the same age group.
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