Spray Painting

Summer is here! That means we try and take advantage of every nice day and spend as much time as we can outdoors. It also means that we can start to bring some of our more messy projects outside and let the rain take care of paint splatters on our deck! Last summer I was able to get a Little Tikes easel (special thanks to my mom who valiantly rescued it from the curb on garbage day) that we leave outside.

To set up this activity all you need are a few spray bottles, I got mine from Dollarama and was lucky that I randomly grabbed 4 different colours, paper and some paint. I squirted a small amount of paint into each bottle and filled them with water, the more paint you add the brighter the colour, that being said it’s important that your paint and water mixture is thin enough to easily spray. When your spray bottle as all mixed up, set out some paper and let your little one go to town. A word of caution though, it’s a good idea to make sure that anything you have hanging on a nearby clothesline should be removed ahead of time, those spray bottle sure are fun for preschoolers and let me say that the entire backyard ( and  a cute little sister) had a healthy colourful splatter to it.

Notice the FRESHLY cleaned laundry in the
background (man.. what was I thinking?!)

This activity is absolutely perfect for preschoolers and older toddlers, my 3 year old Mr. Jeej loved it! It kept him busy for the latter part of an afternoon. Not only does it allow for ample creativity, it also leaves room for discussion about colour mixing. To enrich your art experience I highly recommend Herve Tullet's Mix It Up! . It's one of my all time favourite books for preschoolers. This activity also has a bonus fine motor component. The little ones will need to practice using their hand muscles to actually spray the paint onto paper, which is so integral for beginning to write. I did let my 15 month old Baby E try out the spray painting, she wasn’t yet able to handle to sprayer and the nozzle kept ending up in her mouth! Luckily Crayola has a lovely line of non-toxic paint!
 The end results are absolutely beautiful and it can be set up less than 5 minutes.