Recycled Materials Printing – A Fun Preschool Art Project Using Packaging Foam!

If you’ve ever held onto a random bit of packaging thinking, “This might come in handy one day,” - congratulations, you’re one of us!

Welcome to Messy Art, where we absolutely save weird pieces of foam for months… and then turn them into fabulous preschool art projects!

This one’s called Recycled Materials Printing, and it’s perfect for kids ages 3+. It’s all about reusing materials, exploring shapes and textures, and creating one-of-a-kind prints, no fancy tools required.

What You’ll Need:

• Any kind of recycled packaging foam

• Cardboard squares

• Scissors

• Glue

• Tempera paint

• Watercolour paper or any thick paper for printing

How We Did It:

1. Cut the Foam into Shapes

We started by chopping our recycled foam into all sorts of fun shapes: circles, triangles, weird blobs, you name it. The preschoolers loved choosing and cutting (with a little help) their own unique shapes.

2. Glue Shapes onto Cardboard

Each child arranged their foam pieces on a square of cardboard to create their own printing plate. This part felt a bit like building a puzzle (a very sticky, lopsided puzzle) but that’s half the fun.

3. Paint the Foam

We used tempera paint and brushes to paint directly on top of the glued-on foam shapes. This is where the colour-mixing magic happens… and the sleeves definitely get painted too.

4. Print It!

Next, we flipped our painted cardboard over and pressed it onto watercolour paper to make our prints. Some prints were bold and clear, others more “abstract”, but every single one was totally unique!

Why We Loved This Project

• It’s cheap! We used all recycled or leftover materials.

• It introduces basic printmaking in a hands-on way.

• It teaches shape recognition, planning, and cause-and-effect.

• It’s just really fun, and no two prints look alike!

Plus, you get to say things like “We did foam relief printing using found materials,” and sound super fancy while surrounded by toddlers in paint-splattered clothes.

Want to Try This at Home or in Your Classroom?

This is a great project to slot into your Earth Day activities, recycling unit, or just a rainy-day craft session. You can use any foam packaging that comes through your door, just give it a quick clean and save it in your “this might be useful” pile (we all have one).

Final Thoughts

Messy? Yes.
Fun? Absolutely.
Worth hoarding strange bits of foam for six months? 100%.

This is just one of many process art projects we love at Messy Art, where the focus is on creativity, exploration, and getting gloriously painty.