A few months ago we happened upon a large pack of painting tools while shopping at Micheal’s. The whole pack, of about 20 items, was on sale for $2.99. That led us down a path of Baby T asking to paint every single day. While I love that she loves painting, I do not always love to clean it up. Painting with water makes both mother and child very happy. She is still improving her fine motor skills and her love of painting while I’m not left with a large mess to clean up. This activity is not a replacement for painting with other kinds of paints. It is another option that can be used when you don’t have time to clean up the mess. Painting with colors can teach a child plenty of skills that painting with water can not.
Related Article: Sensory Bin Activity
The Benefits of Painting for Children
Painting has so many benefits regardless of the medium. Parents should find time to provide their children with painting activities weekly.
Painting helps develop
- Hand-eye coordination
- Self expression
- Hand mobility
- Fine motor skills
- Decision making skills
- Bonding time
- Focus
- Creativity
These are just a few of the benefits your child can acquire from painting. Painting is a great skill that can help your child’s overall development.
Our Painting with Water Activity
We started by laying down a huge piece of cardboard (Side note: don’t ever throw away cardboard from your packages. Re-purpose it through activities with your children). Baby T filled a cup full of water per my request. She set it down on top of the cardboard and sat down to start exploring her new activity.
I started this as a child lead activity. I wanted her to be able to explore the idea of painting with another medium.
She loved it. The water would make marks all over the cardboard and then disappear in about a minute.
She freely explored all of the tools. Sponges quickly became her favorite.
When the tools became uninteresting she resorted to using her whole hand. Finger painting is the best!
I sat down with her and wrote out the entire alphabet. This activity is open ended and you can lead it whatever direction you choose. Practice letter/shape recognition or just use it as a bonding experience with your child.
Baby T flourished with this activity. She spent an hour exploring all of her tools and painting different pictures. My favorite time to set up this activity is in the kitchen when I am getting dinner ready. This activity is also really fun to do outside on the concrete on a hot day.
What are your favorite mess free activities?
Shop Related Items
This is so cute! Someone had so much fun!
This is so smart! I really love this idea. I will pass this along to my family members that have babies!
Great article. What a good idea. How fun.
Great idea for quick fun when you don’t want to deal with the mess! 🙂