Whether you’re creating art to welcome in a new calendar year, or you’re looking for ideas to celebrate Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, Diwali, Independence Day, or any other reason for celebration, this process art project — utilizing the humble paper towel roll or cardboard tube and paint — lets kiddos light up the night sky with fireworks in their own way.

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Now, we all know the workhorse cardboard tube is an important tool when it comes to creating art in preschool. And we as teachers are constantly on the hunt for new and different ways to use them, aren’t we? This method turns the classic paper towel roll into a paint brush, with some pretty cool effects! Here’s what you’ll need to have your kiddos creating their cardboard tube fireworks art in no time.

Supplies & Prep:

• Several 6-inch long cardboard paper towel tubes splayed open from the bottom like a sun or flower. (Cutting instructions below.) To start you’ll need at least one for each color you use, but they do get soggy and floppy with use, so extras are advised.
• Black construction paper (we used 9″x12″ for more blank “night sky” to light up)
• Newspaper to cover everything in sight — because this stuff goes everywhere. Especially if the requisite “rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air” sound effects become an active part of the painting, which I do highly encourage.
• Colorations metallic gel paints in assorted colors — we used pink, blue, green, purple and gold. (In the pictures we mixed gold with a bit of yellow Biocolor, but it’s not necessary to mix it for this project. The straight gold makes beautiful fireworks on its own.) The type of paint is important — we’ve found other types of paint seep into the black construction paper and don’t have the pop the metallic gel paints do.
• Paper plates that are large enough to allow your splayed open cardboard tubes to spin and soak up paint.

Cutting Instructions:

Start by cutting slits up from the bottom of your cardboard tube. Keep the slits the same general size and spacing apart. About 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 inches long and roughly 2/3- to 3/4-inch wide. Longer and more narrowly spaced cuts will give a different look to your cardboard tube fireworks, but will get soggier faster and begin to flop sooner. So have several backups if you decide to go that route.

Once you have the spokes of the fireworks cut, fan them out so they resemble a sun or a flower.

Next, pour about a 2-3-inch diameter glob of paint onto your paper plates — one color per plate. Flatten out a splayed open cardboard tube into the paint and spin it so all the little spokes grab up some paint.

And now you’re ready for some stamping!

Don’t worry if your kiddos mix colors, spin the tubes on the paper, or stamp all in one place. This is one of those process art projects that will elicit “oohs” when they stamp and lift to see what they made. And honestly, every one of our kiddos was thrilled with how their artwork turned out because they all truly evoke night skies full of fireworks. (And if you have kiddos like ours, some place a lot of weight on the product they produce. No matter how much we stress the importance of the process, exploring, and just having fun with it, a few of them do get frustrated if something doesn’t turn out looking the way they envisioned.)

It’s important to use the metallic gel paints on black construction paper. The colors really pop off the paper and reflect light in the shimmery bits.

Here (above) is an example of what begins to happen when the spokes of the cardboard tube begin to get soggy. The spokes flop back inward and don’t create that sunburst or sunflower look. It’s still beautiful and firework-ey, but if you have perfectionist preschoolers (which we do), you will probably want to have fresh tubes on hand at this point.

They really are stunning aren’t they?

What do you think? Have you tried this type of art project? Show us your results and comment below!