Finger Painting Adventures

Somehow, I let Little Dude get dangerously close to age 3 before doing a finger painting project at home. The sad part is that we have had a set of washable finger paints for over a year now and still managed to never do anything with them. He has finger painted elsewhere (like in his toddler class), but never at home. We draw, cook, and do other creative projects, but not finger paint.

This past weekend was my mom's birthday, so I decided that it was a great excuse to finally get some finger painting under our belts. I bought a couple of 8x10" canvases from Michael's so that the kids could make some masterpieces for grandma's birthday.

I cleared off the kitchen table and set everything up. Little Dude was very excited to start:

He really enjoyed picking out the colors and carefully laying them out on his canvas:

You can tell he's concentrating hard when he sticks his tongue out.

Then I got brave and set Baby Boo down on her booster seat and gave her some yellow:

I left her with a pacifier in hopes that it would discourage her from trying to eat any paint. It worked!

As expected, she painted the table as much as she painted the canvas at first. I didn't mind that so much, but when she started trying to shake the paint off of her palette (ie, a Ziploc lid), I needed to find a better solution. I found that she really liked it when I squirted the paint directly onto the canvas and then let her spread it all over:

She had a good 'ol time being messy.

In the meantime, my very neat and meticulous Little Dude carefully worked on his:

Still sticking his tongue out. 

After several minutes, both kids were done. Here is Little Dude's final product:

And Baby Boo's:

They took a while to dry since I had encouraged both kids to really cake on the paint:

Clean up was a breeze with the washable paint. A quick wipe of a wet rag and it all was gone off the table and the booster seat.

Little Dude was very proud of his artwork and kept asking me when we could give them to grandma. When the day actually came, he very excitedly handed grandma the gift bag, and pointed out which one was his versus his sister's. They made great presents for a grandma who's whole world seems to be these kids!

We will have to finger paint again soon some time.