May 18, 2010

Finger painting

Who doesn’t love finger painting? It’s a great opportunity to develop fine motor skills and encourage children to explore textures. I love sensory experiences for all ages.

Traditional finger painting is simple and fun – using fingers and hands to spread paint onto paper.

A fun twist is to add different textures to the paints. You can add sand or rice to add a different feel to the paint. By adding flour to the paint it becomes a lot thicker. If you water down the paint it becomes sloppy.


This is an activity I did with toddlers. Because it was the first time they had used textured finger paint we were just using it as a sensory experience rather than creating a finished artwork.


I always find it interesting to watch children explore the textures for the first time – some love it straight away - others are a bit confused.
It’s also interesting to see if children use the different textured paints in different ways when painting.



Come over and play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up

4 comments:

Melissa said...

I'd never thought to add sand or similar to finger paints before. Great idea :)

Debi said...

I'm with Melissa -- adding sand or rice to the usual finger painting would let it take on a whole new dimension. Thanks for sharing the idea!

Christie - Childhood 101 said...

I must admit I have never thinned down the paint for sloppy fingerpainting, must give that a try.

Erin said...

It's such a simple idea, but causes great reactions :)