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.

Painting with Cars

Although, this is by no means a new activity, it's a favourite in our house. Getting cars all "painty" is always an easy sell with preschoolers. It's a very simple process oriented art activity that doesn't require much set up. All you need is paint, a handful of toy vehicles, and your choice of paper.

I blobbed paint into a reusable tray so that Mr. Jeej would be able to dip his cars into the paint by himself. He (and just about every other preschooler) loves any opportunity to engage in something independently. For Baby E, I dipped the car, well actually monster truck (these were the easiest for her to grasp) in the paint and let her roll the truck around. She was super impressed with the result! Although my 11 month old really enjoyed this activity, I would say that if you'd like to try this with an infant, be prepared for a mess! Baby E loved to roll her truck onto the floor and watch the wheels create tracks on the floor as well.

Mr. Jeej loved the idea that using different vehicles produced a different track mark on his page. This activity provides endless opportunities for exploration with colour as well. He experimented with dipping each wheel I different paint colours. The result were gorgeous! Also, I will say that this is one of the few activities that Mr. Jeej actually is excited to help clean up. I gave him a bowl of soapy water, a towel, and the job of getting the paint off of the vehicle wheels. The whole painting and clean up kept the two littles engaged for over an hour, which is a huge success in my books!