Painting Leaves

Finger painting is a great sensory activity for kids. You can also use it as an opportunity to talk about colors too! Zel received some finger paints for his birthday a few weeks ago and we decided to use them with our Christmas Countdown project of painting leaves. Adding something new (like leaves) to an old activity (like painting) can really refresh your child's interest in it.

At first, Zel was hesitant to use the finger paints because normally our painting rule is "only paint on the paper." So he started off using a paint brush to paint on the leaves. He thought it was funny that the leaves would stick to the brush, so he experimented with that a little bit. After a few minutes of explaining that this was special paint that is okay to paint on your body, he started using the paint brush to paint on his fingers. It is "finger paint" after all! 

Then he got bold and started rubbing the paint all over his chest and belly. After he was covered he felt confident enough to stick his hand in the paint and use it to paint on the leaves and paper. Once he was finished, we went straight to the bathtub and Zel helped scrub off the paint. He played for so long that I had time to give myself a pedicure!