Have Fun Getting Dirty

Ok, now take your mind out of the gutter... I'm talking about fun learning activities for the kids. Getting their hands dirty, forgetting about the cleanup, and exploring with new textures. Some of these activities might be better suited to summer time, but we spend so much more time indoors during the winter that we need some activities to brighten the day.

Today's fun activity was finger painting (read whole body painting!). We have an unfinished basement, so it makes for the perfect place to get messy and not worry (kitchen floors usually work well too). You can buy all the supplies you need at the dollar store.
-1 shower curtain or plastic table cloth
-Some non toxic tempra paint in the primary colors and some white (Tip: you might want to do a test patch on your child a few hours before to make sure they don't have an allergic reaction.)
-A paint brush (or two or three)
-Some bristol board
-paper plates

Get your LO stripped down to a diaper, and put on some old clothes you don't mind getting dirty. Set out your shower curtain and bristol board. Paper plates are perfect for mixing the paints and provide ample room for little hands. Get comfy and encourage your LO to touch the paint, feel the texture, experiment with finger painting, toe painting, even crawling on the paper! You can offer them the paint brush, or any other household item that will make a unique design in the paint. A comb, a sponge, handprints, footprints anything you can think of. Teach them about the colors. Red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green (in less you work at Home Depot, in which case green and yellow make blue *sigh*) blue and red make purple. Teach them that all colors come from the three primary colors, red, blue, yellow. And most importantly, join in, get messy and have fun!

Really me,
The art teacher
Nik