printing money

Look at us, we’re rolling in it!

Last week after our textile printing project, we went to a demonstration at our local art store, where they were printing t-shirts and demonstrating other printmaking techniques. I wanted to continue our printmaking experiments, so I thought it would be fun to print money. Both kids love play money, and I thought it would also be a fun way to incorporate math into their play.

We used these foam plates, which are really easy for kids to use. The trickiest part was trying to explain to Otis that you need to draw and write everything backwards.

We used a couple of scraps to experiment with writing his name:

Then we made a few sketches:

Then Otis drew with a pencil on the plate, and we printed our money:

I loved this experiment. Otis, less so. I think some steps required too much attention for him – all the backwards writing, lining up the plates with the paper (even though I cut the paper a little bigger to give him some room) – and he likes projects with a definite goal (such as printing an entire piece of fabric). He lost interest after a while. But I’m not giving up on this idea yet – I’m going to make more art with Otis’s kindergarten class (we made Valentines last time), and I think I’m going to modify this project so that the kids can personalize their printed money with drawings of themselves. Next week we are definitely going to take a break from printmaking.

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