I had this idea a while back about how I could get Kieran to make art without it being too much of a messy undertaking. I don't care that much about the mess - I live with a toddler, how could I? - but we do live in a small rental apartment, so I had to be practical. One day while daydreaming, I mean thinking, it occured to me that I could use my watercolour crayons and coloured pencils to have a relatively mess free toddler art session!
Here's what we did.
I scribbled the watercolour crayons and pencils onto some watercolour paper and taped it to the kitchen table.
I know what you're thinking: " directly on the table?". Well one of my upcoming projects will be to cover over this table so I didn't care too much. Plus it's a basic table from Ikea, not an heirloom. However if you do this you may want to use a protective covering on yours!
I already had the toddler paint brush and non-spill water cup ready for making a start with art!
I sat Kieran in his chair, wet the paintbrush and let him have at it!
He had an absolute blast!
With both sheets wet and "painted" he started dabbing on the table, so I grabbed a half of a paper doily and let him go on with that.
(Please forgive the runny nose pics, that's pretty standard around here these days.)
The next day we continued with another idea.
Once again we started with scribbled watercolour crayons on paper.
After he had "painted" to his heart's delight, I then put red paint on his hands, to press handprints into the background.
I don't have photos of this part because I needed to focus, do this quickly, and make sure he didn't try to get a nice mouthful of paint. This was the point at which I am sure he thought I'd gone stark raving mad, but he put up with me anyway.
I am planning to make some home made finger paints using this recipe, so that he can really go to town with painting soon. And this time I will protect the table and floor.
Now for the Valentine's Day Cards. I put them together when he was napping.
Bilingual of course. I cut the hearts out of his artwork, backed them with the paper doily and added the sentiment with stickers.
For the insides I cut out the handprints and stamped his name. That name stamp was actually handcarved by Lucas!
I am beyond tickled with how this idea turned out, and can't wait to do more art with my boy. If you have any ideas for fun art projects for toddlers please leave me a link or note in the comments!
