The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark – Expressive Arts Activities
This is a well known and well loved story about a baby owl who seeks help to overcome his fear of the dark. Find a link to the story here You Tube – The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark.
Watch the video and try out some of these activities.
Fireworks Painting
In the story, Plop and his Mummy and Daddy enjoyed a fireworks display. Make your own fireworks painting.
Splatter painting is a great way to create the effect of colourful fireworks exploding in the sky. This short clip illustrates the method.
You Tube – Splatter Painting Method
Jackson Pollock was a famous artist who used a splatter painting effect in his pictures. View 2 of his pictures online at
National Galleries of Scotland – Jackson Pollock
Splatter painting can be quite messy so you should work somewhere you can safely make a mess (outdoors would be ideal but not essential) and wear old clothes.
You will need: black paper/card or paper/card that has been painted black and allowed to dry, paint brushes, coloured children’s paints, water,
The black background represents the night sky. Mix your paints so that they are quite runny and splatter easily.
Get splattering!
Create “Beautiful moonlight” Art
You will need: black paper or paper that has been painted black and left to dry, white chalk and space to do some messy work!
At the top of your paper, draw a moon using the chalk and smudge it with your fingers to spread the chalk round and round in a circle.
In the bottom half of the picture, use your chalk to draw houses (perhaps your own) and parks. The white chalk lines you make will look like the moonlight glinting off the top of houses and trees. Again, use your finger to spread the chalk.
Chalk pictures smudge easily, If you want to stop the picture smudging, spray a light coating of hairspray across the whole of your picture.
Make Some Shadow Art
You will need: a sunny day, an outdoor space where you can see shadows being cast on the ground or against a wall.
Stand with your feet together and arms spread wide apart. Look at the shadow you have cast. Does it look like a tree trunk and branches? Can you think of way to make it look like the shadow of tree covered in leaves?
What other shadow pictures can you make? Experiment with using different objects – for example, is it possible to make the shadow of a cereal packet look like a skyscraper?
