10 Tips for Finger Painting!
Finger painting with young kids is insanely messy, but it is worth the effort. Here’s how to survive the experience without it becoming a colourful catastrophe:
1. Dress your child in old clothes or put on a paint shirt (I do both!)
2. Cover surfaces with a drop sheet or old newspapers.
3. Use decent quality paint. You need good depth of colour and good consistency.
4. Limit the colours you put out. We just use red/blue/yellow, because the primary colours all end up mixed and create secondary colours anyway.
5. Use paint containers that are accessible for little fingers. Try take-away food containers, shallow yoghurt tubs or even egg cartons.
6. Remember the younger the child, the bigger the piece of paper they need!
7. Show your child how to use their fingertips rather than their whole hand. (Don’t be cross at them though when they go right ahead and stick their whole hand in the paint anyway!)
8. Talk to your child while painting. Rather than ask “What is it?” try asking “What are you thinking about while you’re painting?” They might be thinking about an object, but they could also be thinking about an experience or an emotion, or they might just be thinking about how the paint feels on their fingers.
9. Fill a large bowl with warm soapy water for cleaning hands at the end.
10. Choose the best painting (or two) to put on display, and tell your child why you chose that picture. It will encourage them the next time you do finger painting!
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For those of you who like to think a little deeper, what else in life is messy, but worth the effort? Marriage? Friendships? Cooking? Dream chasing..? Something to ponder while your little ones create their masterpieces…
I used to do this in Summer with waterbased paint – put the kids outside, stripped off in the shade. They would get wet & painted, because it was water based, it washed out easily
PS – Ten tips… get it?! (I know, my jokes are terrible).
Heh, ten tips… cute! I love a good pun
ten tips – LOL!
Great list
This makes me so excited for my baby to be old enough to finger paint! And ten tips — hee.
Finger painting is so much fun! Sometimes I look at my ‘little’ boy and wonder how he got big so quickly! Maybe we could do a project tonight!
corm flour and food dye make good finger paint
@Nicole Corn flour and food dye? Sounds cheap and easy! How is the cleanup…?
Brings back some great memories. I used an easel though, and bought propler kids paint pots and thick brushes. (and they also fingerpainted too, just ake the lids off) I still have some of my youngest deleicate water colours packed away somewhere, so special. Ahhh, the memories, all the emotion and none of the mess!
oh we loooooooove finger painting!
Find a nice big sheet of plastic and tape it to the table top then finger paint right onto that – take a ‘print’ with paper if you like. Clean up is easy cause you can just take off the plastic and whisk it away.
Add a squirt of liquid soap to whatever paint you use also makes clean up easy!
@Katef Great tip to add liquid soap to paint! I had planned to do “reverse finger painting” next week – definitely will now. I’ll let you know how we go and put up a post
great idea !
I can’t wait to try it with my two year olds.
[...] in Activities, Featured Articles, Indoor on June 10, 2009 | no responses // Last week I posted ten tips for fingerpainting, and one of my readers suggested a great follow on activity – thanks Kate! As promised we gave it [...]
[...] this week I watched my daughter finger painting. It was only four months ago that I blogged about ten tips for fingerpainting, and posted this pic of her artwork. Finger Painting – [...]
finger paint on an old box …outside on the grass !