It’s no surprise to anyone who reads that I’m really inconsistent. I aim to blog at least once a week but it doesn’t take long for two, three, four weeks to pass without me even looking at WordPress, let alone write up a post. Mind you, I didn’t start writing so I could feel pressured to keep it up so it doesn’t really bother me that much. But, I do love sharing my girls and what we go through so I do feel a sting of regret here and there when I haven’t written anything for a while. So, on a note of wanting to contribute more to the blogosphere I give you a weekly article: Friday Fun with Toddlers. We can thank another blogger out there [ 2 little rosebuds], for one of her recent posts was my inspiration. Well, one of her comment replies to be specific.
Each week I’ll try out a new Toddler Activity with Shula and Maretta and report back on Friday. I have a feeling that Pinterest will be the main source of these ideas (I definitely wouldn’t be able to think them up on my own) but I’ll also look towards other bloggers for activities. Fortunately, without knowing that I’d be doing this, we already did a not-our-normal activity this week!
No-Mess Finger Painting
Got a link to “The Hippie Housewife” blog from my Mom, for mess free painting.
- Take a large sealable plastic bag (Ziploc-style) and squirt in some paint (we used acrylic). A small to medium size pile should do the trick. Use as many or as few colours as you’d like; we went with the three primary colours.
- Reinforce the opening of the bag with some tape (to make sure your munchkins don’t accidentally or purposely open it up!). Put down a blank piece of paper on your work surface and tape the plastic bag on top. I didn’t find it was necessary to tape the blank paper down; the plastic bag seemed to keep it in the right spot.
- Let ’em have at it! We used wooden pegs and blocks, and little cars, to manipulate the paint in different ways.
The instructions given on the blog were great. Our set up was a bit different because we just used what we had laying around the house. I used packing tape instead of painter’s tape and acrylic paint instead of tempera paint. I also did all three primary colours in each bag so there was no fighting over the different colours. Set-up was a bit challenging because the girls were really interested in what I was doing with big plastic bags and a roll of tape but once it was ready to go the girls sat down and… didn’t really do much with it. We tried using some different toys (wooden peg, cars, hammer) to draw with so the girls could see what they could do with the paint.
I think by the end of the activity (didn’t last more than 10 minutes) most of the artistic changes that had taken place were at mommy’s hands. At 19 months, Maretta and Shula may be a bit too young for the “no-mess” part; They probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if they’d been able to get it on their hands and face!
The bags are now hanging on our fridge amongst their crayon drawings, and every once in a while they’ll smoosh some of the paint around.
Thanks Mom and The Hippie Housewife for the inspiration this week!
Twin Adventures 