Messy Hands, Messy Everything! - Finger Painting

If you read my last post you may remember that our window painting turned into window finger painting. So, this art activity up was just the thing to extend the girl's interest a little more.

Not that I organised it but even the least organised, messiest, spontaneous activity can be fun! It certainly wasn't put together the way I would like it BUT the two girlies were so happy doing painting after painting after painting. They were in their pj's. I was trying to cook pasta for dinner. And, there wasn't a place to hang the artwork so the pictures just piled up one after the other. This of course didn't seem like a problem at all for a 4yr old and a 2 yr old. They were completely lost in all the fun and excitement.

There are lots of ways to make finger paint. Here's how we did it....

Cel mix paint + a bit of warm water + some powder paint colours (food colouring) + paper + hands = a whole lot of messy hands fun.

I had some fun too. I got to see the smiles of joy as the girls put together their own creative art activity.

Window Painting

We had such a beautiful sunny winter's morning here in Brisbane the other day that there was no way were were going to waste it indoors, even though the girlies are both a little unwell. So, outside we went with our hats and sunscreen on, ready to discover some play fun.

Now that Miss H is a little bit taller, I thought it was time to get some paints out and have a great time painting our downstairs windows, which have always been a little too high. The girls had just finished drawing on the besser bricks with chalk nearby so they were ready to give this activity a go.

I squirted some shaving cream into our paint pots and added a bit of powder paint colour (you could use food colouring too). Miss M and Miss H helped to mix the colours, which turned out to be a good activity in itself. We used shaving cream today but we could have chosen to use acrylic or Cel mix paint instead.

Even though I thought Miss H was taller, she wasn't quite tall enough so out came the outdoor chairs and the girls got started on making the windows look colourful and bright.

The girlies discovered that the paint felt great so they did away with the brushes and started finger painting, also a wonderful experience. To end our painting activity, we made sure to take some pics and then washed the paint away with the hose. The windows were clean again.

Miss M got some inspiration from the hose and ran upstairs. When she came back down again she was dressed in her swimmers hoping for a splash from the hose. Instead, I sent her back upstairs and the two girls (in their swimmers) had a swim in the bath. A great finish, and an easy way to clean off all that paint.

Funny Play Dough People

Meet our funny play dough people.

This activity is just plain fun. You can use anything you like really to create faces of all kinds. We found some coloured pasta, "pop cleaners" pipe cleaners and large google eyes in amongst our collage stocks and when we repeated the activity we also added some coloured feathers which worked perfectly too. I set up everything in little bowls and gave each of the girlies (+ our teenage house guest who thought it was a great activity too) a blob of play dough, then they got creating. We also took this activity to our Mums on the GO group and the kids thoroughly enjoyed it for the whole morning.

It's great to find a new, fun activity, especially a play dough one. We love our play dough play!