Fun with Paint

My kids love painting.  What kid doesn't?  So, Pierce and I have been working on several paintings together.  Ones worth keeping!  This is a fun and easy activity for even the young ones (Pierce is 3), and the finished product is great!  So far, he's done a shark, an alligator and a whale (all his choices for favorite animals). 

Here's how it works.  I bought a few canvases (they are so cheap at the craft stores) and some acrylic paints.  I let Pierce use his favorite color to cover the canvas (covering the table and giving him a smock first!  This is messy business, people!).  His strokes are not perfect, in fact, they are horribly messy, but it looks kind of neat that way.  There's something about covering a white canvas blue that can hold a child's attention until every little white spot is gone!  Then, lots of praise for a job well done and a break for the canvas to dry.  This works well because the attention span of a little one has already been exhausted. In the mean time, find out the child's favorite animal or image he wants to paint (keeping it super simple!) and find some of your kids books with pictures of this item in them.  Use your favorite illustration and copy it free-hand onto a manila file folder nice and large (to cover your canvas).  Use a pencil for lots of corrections if needed!  Then cut out your image carefully and use what's left of the file folder after removing the image as your stencil.  Help your child choose an appropriate color for their image (or let them choose an inappropriate one!) and mix it up for them.  Tape the stencil onto the dried canvas (a little tape won't hurt it!).  Then give them a rounded foam brush to dot the new paint color into the stencil.  By dotting the paint instead of dragging it with a brush, you'll keep it from going under the edges of the stencil.  Dot, dot, dot until his little heart is content and the image is fully covered, then remove the stencil and enjoy the masterpiece!  With Pierce's whale, we went back and added the white spots over the black after it had dried (using pieces cut from the same stencil drawing).  And then I showed him where to dot the eye.  So simple!  This beauty will go in Pierce and Grant's bathroom once Brett gets a fresh coat of paint on the walls.

This is such a fun activity and the child actually paints everything on the canvas, so it is truly their creation that they can feel proud of that.

Inspired by an image on Pinterest, we did some work in our mudroom, and Pierce's alligator (or is it a crocodile?) is proudly displayed there.  The idea with the mudroom wall of art is to have one piece from each child, but we are waiting patiently on Grant to produce his first masterpiece, and until then, Sydney has two pieces displayed.  This was also a fun project, another little item on Brett's long Honey-Do list. The pegs were only $5 at Michaels (less if you use your coupon!) and he painted them with leftover trim paint we had in the attic.  The art was free!  And a few frames were less than $25. Our mudroom looks and functions so much better now!  Thanks to Brett and Pinterest and my little artists.