Friday, January 27, 2012

Toddler Art Activity: Window Ziploc Painting

Where would I be without Pinterest!? Seriously! I have a board dedicated to ideas for things to do with my son. Even though, the early part of this blog has been devoted to more in-depth art activities I've done with my older daughters, I've decided it is now time to introduce my two year old to the world of color, painting and art! As I stated in the previous post, he has had no attention span up until now (which is understandable and goes along with his age). And he is very prone to getting aggressive quickly and throwing just about anything. So the idea of doing any kind of "messy" art with him has been very off-putting. But, I feel like I can't keep him from the fun of art just because he might be even messier than my girls were.

I decided to start slow and easy. One of the things I pinned was window ziploc painting! I thought I would try it the same day we introduced the light panel because it is something you could do ON the light panel. But I felt like it would be better if I taped it up first and got him used to the idea of what he was supposed to do with it before we used it with the light panel. So I taped two different bags up on our deck door and showed them to him after his nap today. He was completely UNinterested.
He was uninterested that is until his sisters came home from school. They rushed to the window to see what it was all about (you can see my younger daughter still has her coat on!). And as soon as they were interested, he toddled over to take part as well!
They asked me to add their favorite colors to the window: pink and turquoise. And they started to experiment. Instead of just using their fingers (I don't blame them. It's winter here and that window gets pretty cold) they decided to try out paint brushes. And the brushes worked just as well as their fingers.
My 8 year old tried taping two colors over the other and discovered she could see the blue through the pink when she painted.
AND, last but not least, they figured out they could play tic-tac-toe over and over again! I really think the sensory play of this appealed to my oldest daughter, just as the light panel did. And hopefully, my son will show some prolonged interest in this if it hangs around long enough. :-)

4 comments:

  1. How much paint did you put in the bag? We have 1 gallon ziploc bags and a 16oz bottle of paint. How much of the bottle should we pour in the bag? Thanks!

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  2. Angela, thanks for stopping by my blog!! I used gallon ziplocs as well. I didn't actually measure the paint. I just sort of squirted some in and squished it around. I did have to add some more. I tried to get it to a consistency where the bag would be covered with a little left to move around. I think there was about an inch of paint (maybe 1.5 inches) across the bottom of the bag when it settled after hanging for a bit. I know that wasn't very specific, but I hope it helps! Have fun!

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  3. is this home made paint? I found thAT my home made stuff might be too thin.

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  4. Hi Sherry! Thanks for stopping by. It's been awhile now, but I think I just used some acrylic craft paint I had laying around. Either that or it was Crayola Washable Paints.

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