I don’t like the thought of kids playing with guns. But water guns are fun and harmless. While your kids spray the water, they can act like little Poseidons, controlling the waves and the seas. Water guns are one of the indispensable appurtenances of a sunny day spent poolside. However, with or without water guns, kids will spray each other. If you’re lucky, both of them like it, but if one of them hates it, then you’re in trouble.

With a simple trick, you can use those same water pistols for a totally different purpose. For example, you can make modern art. The only difficulty is that you have to add the paint through that small hole on the gun. If you have a funnel or a syringe (from your kid’s vitamin) lying around, this process is much easier. If you don’t have one, don’t worry because you can use the pump from your hand soap to spray it in.

You will need at least two colors. I found spray bottles so we could have 4 colors. This way, we didn’t have to change the water guns to a different color of paint. The spray bottles were a lot easier, in fact. The caps on the heads of the spray bottles make it easy to adjust the flow of paint coming out. It also helped so that the paint didn’t finish as fast as it did with the water guns.

Before you can fill the squirt guns, prepare the sheets of paper so that you can hang them somewhere. Ether on a string, on a chalkboard, or stick it to a wall in your bathroom. Wherever the “after-mess” can be easily cleaned up. If you want to make it more artsy, then add some painters tape on it. If they haven’t memorized their names yet, this is certainly a good way to let it sink in. And don’t leave the empty paper unattended, because they might start drawing on it without the paint guns.

When all the preparation is done, let the games begin. Art making has never been this child’s play, especially for children. Just spray the paint in turns. The best place to do this activity is in the sun so that it dries fast. Sometimes it’s good to wait a little bit until it dries, then add it to the next layer if you don’t want the paint to mix anymore.

For the brighter color mix you have to add a little more paint (yellow, for example) than for the primary colors such as red, green and blue. Shake it well before you use it. I had different colored guns, so it was easy to distinguish what paint was in which gun. If your water guns look alike, then it’s a good idea to label them so that you know what color is in which.

Tell them that they don’t need to pull the trigger so hard because it’s better if it sprays less. This way it won’t drench the paper. Before you take off the tape, make sure it’s fully dried.

We used regular paper and easily washable paint, so the clean up was easy. This idea is good for making gifts for the grandparents or just for friends. You can design anything using the tape that you want. However, it’s better to think about shapes or objects using straight lines. But if you have sticky contact paper, you can cut shapes easily by folding the paper in half by creating a heart or a flower, for example.

It will look like modern art, and the artists are your kids. At the end, let them be proud of it. They will look nice in frames too.