How to Create an Inviting Backyard Art Area for Kids

How to setup a backyard art space, and suggestions for simple ways to create outdoors. Art that is easy and accessible, and inspired by nature.

My kids love to engage in art, and open-ended process art is my favorite to do with kids. We are setting up an space for backyard art outside this summer. Check out some of our favorite set-ups below! This desk from Simplay3 is perfect for storing and creating our outdoor art activities.

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A Backyard Art Area Kids Will Love

We use this Create and Store Art Desk because it’s durable enough for the backyard and easy to clean. Plus, it all kind of ‘folds’ in together to store easily when not in use – making it a great small-space solution for indoors or outdoors!

It has made the perfect addition to our patio space, and my little artist loves going outside to paint her nature treasures among the birds!

What we added to our backyard art setup:

plastic art desk
nature treasures such as pinecones, rocks, sticks and wood rounds
washable paint/homemade sidewalk paint
paintbrushes
colored bubbles (you can add food coloring to bubble solution as a DIY)
sidewalk chalk
water
dirt
baking sheets

Fun ideas for backyard art!

Paint with colored bubbles. Blow colored bubbles onto heavy paper such as card stock to make really beautiful prints! The more colors the merrier 🙂

Paint some nature treasures. We love to go on family walks and hunt for nature treasures! Lucky for me, this walk after leads to my favorite coffee shop 😉 Gather some pinecones, sticks, rocks and wooden pieces to keep in your backyard art stash.

Paint with mud. Mixing dirt and water never gets old for kids. Mud is a wonderful sensory medium and can be used like finger paint outside! We like to use our hands or a paintbrush to write with mud on a baking sheet, this is excellent for fine motor and pre-writing skills. Bonus, you can use the baking sheet for mud pies when done!

Get creative with sidewalk chalk! Sidewalk chalk is perfect to keep in an outdoor art space. We like to dip it in water to color on rocks as the colors get nice and vibrant when wet. You can also draw a board game on the ground and play! If you want to paint with your chalk, make your own liquid sidewalk chalk with cornstarch and water.