T-Shirt Design Ideas for Children

T-shirt decorating provides children with an inexpensive,

 creative outlet--and they can wear their creations when 

they're done! Decorating t-shirts can be as simple or

 elaborate as you choose. Limit decorating supplies to

 different colored fabric paints applied to the t-shirts., 

or use fabric patches, sparkle, stencils and paint

 brushes to create textured, multi-mode decorated t-shirts.

Books

• Ask children to select their favorite book as a theme for their t-shirts. Alternatively, provide them with a list of books to choose from. Have them put the title and author on their t-shirts (younger children will need help with this) and then decorate the shirt with objects or words from the book. For example, "The Little House in the Big Woods" would display images of a log cabin, the forest, cheese or a bear.

Music

• Music themes adapt themselves well to t-shirt designs. Children can decorate their shirts with the treble and bass clef, notes, lyrics, names of composers or musical instruments. To give the craft an educational connection, encourage them to choose a design based on music they've been studying in school or at music lessons.
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Vocabulary Words

• Ask the children to pick several vocabulary or spelling words to splash across their t-shirts. They might pick words beginning with the same letter, words that have the same Latin root or words with the same number of syllables. Encourage them to add pictures to go with the words.

Places

• Create a list of places--cities, countries, rivers, lakes or oceans--for the kids to put on their t-shirts. They could pick a single place and draw several images to go with the location, or choose several related places for a theme, such as the Great Lakes, the five largest cities in the country, the three longest rivers in the world or the two tallest mountains in the country. A montage of images completes the theme t-shirt decoration.

Art

• T-shirts can be decorated with children's original art or copies of the great masters. Have them select one artist and copy his work, such as Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Matisse's "The Dessert: Harmony in Red." If the kids have been learning about different types of art--such as impressionist or abstract--they can create their own design in that style.