5 Ways to Play with Aluminium Foil

Here are 5 ways to play with aluminium foil:

1. Foil Alphabet

This is a great challenge for those who are learning their letters. Foil is so easily molded and holds its shape so well that it’s a great medium for this activity. You can make an entire alphabet, make names or we’ve even had a go at numbers and shapes.  

A set of alphabet cards can help them copy and build and I also pre ripped the foil to manage the size of the letters.

2. Leaf & Sharpie

I start with a sheet of cardboard as a base then, by placing leaves under foil and smoothing them down, you can create a perfect image within the foil. These look great as is but adding some colour using sharpie is a favourite activity of ours. Permanent markers react on the foil to bleed and blend in a different way to other materials, definitely one to try!

3. Foil and Wool Sculpture

A popular Art Lesson when teaching in school was to build figures or animals from foil. It’s just so easy to manipulate and has a strength unlike other cheap materials. We’d often cover in paper mache to complete the figure work.

For my younger learners at home, we usually stick to more abstract forms. They love to roll and bend and connect the foil making ‘branches’ and ‘arms’ and ‘worms’. I encourage them to wrap them in wool to complete this activity. This not only adds colour, but uses an extra skill.

4. Foil Caps

I am a big fan of bottle caps in play and if you cover them in foil you have a brand new resource. We use these in so many ways, as a shiny, attractive loose parts, as a building material, as counters, robot eyes, and finally my 2yo just loves to unwrap them!

Painting on foil is another common use of the material. We love that! The caps are great to paint on or use sharpie to decorate too. They can become part of lots of creative projects this way.

5. Tools

This is a bit of a crafty one that the boys enjoy. I tend to cut the cardboard tool shapes, although my 4yo can manage a bit of cutting himself. They both can wrap the metal parts of the tool in foil, and then we colour and decorate the handles. The challenge comes from wrapping thoroughly, so that they resemble the shape underneath, lots of squashing, ripping, tearing and pushing.

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Shonagh Ruddick

Shonagh worked as a secondary school art and design teacher for 7 years. In addition to classroom teaching she enjoyed mentoring teachers in training, developing materials for the new curriculum, and working with Microsoft Innovative Teachers. Now she stays at home and creates fun learning materials and challenges for her three busy boys (hence the blog name). By sharing her daily adventures she hopes to help out other parents with long days and big minds to fill.

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