Sensory Play with Paint

I've always avoided painting at home with the toddlers, always being too worried about the mess it might make, and as we rent our home I'm not keen on having to repaint the walls or replace carpets.  However, a combination of the fact that the children now sit still for longer to do craft and my realisation that life is too short to worry about a splash of paint, led me to plan some sensory play with paint today.

My last toddler craft post was all about us making Easter cards and at the moment we are keeping with the Easter theme, so today the children painted on foam egg shapes, but to give the sensory play we used our fingers.

To save the children messing up their clothes I dug out two old t-shirts from my 10 year old's wardrobe and popped them on the toddlers.  Yep, Samuel's old age 9 t-shirts covered them up lovely.  A much cheaper option than buying expensive painting coveralls.

I then taped some large sheets of painting paper to the table and gave each of the children a foam egg shape to paint on.  I used some paper plates to squeeze different coloured paints onto as we don't have any paint palates.  It actually made it really quick to tidy up if you're time limited, as I simply threw the paper plates away afterwards.

Oliver is often quite fussy about getting his hands dirty, but he was happy to dip his finger in the dollop of blue paint and dabbed it onto the foam shape.  Isabella was more than happy to get her hands dirty and soon moved on from delicate finger painting to all in hand painting.

The good thing about taping the large sheets of paper to the table, was that the children could have fun making hand prints on that, as well as decorating their egg shape.

As they explored the paint they became more adventurous, mixing the colours together, and Oliver keen to copy his sister by making a hand print.  I gave the children a second egg shape to decorate and Oliver chose to do this lovely hand print. 

Oliver and Isabella will be sticking their finger decorated eggs to some card and turning them into a lovely Easter cards for their Nanny and Grandad. 

A great sensory and visual play activity.