My toddler recently gave up her nap. Typically she has some quiet time in her room instead, but we're currently doing a big remodel at our house and it doesn't work to have quiet time in the afternoons. Instead of having leisure time while she plays and naps, we now have almost three hours of one on one time to work on projects, play outside, and do chores while my son is at school.
My daughter loves painting so this week we set up a simple drip art station using some shamrock and Easter egg shaped paper.
Since St. Patrick's Day and Easter are so close together this year we thought it would be fun to make some holiday creations to have on display all month long!
Supplies:
- cardboard box top or a tray and something to help prop it up (we used a plastic tub though you could also just prop it up against a wall)
- watered down paint or liquid watercolors
- pipet or something else to squirt water a bit (you could also do this with a spray bottle)
- cardstock cut into holiday shapes (make sure you paper is heavy enough or it will tear)
- tape
Directions:
This project is super simple!
Grab a box top or tray and tape a piece of paper to it. We used shamrock and egg shaped paper. The bigger the box top, the bigger your paper can be!
Put your paint into easily accessible containers and suck up some paint into your pipet and squirt it at the paper!
Your child can experiment with where they want to squirt the paint. Some will want to squirt it at the top of the picture and watch the paint run down the whole shape and some might have a different idea.
We left this project out all day and my son had to have a turn when he got home from school too. He had fun pretending the pipet was a syringe (since he had his 5 yr old vaccinations yesterday) and he pretended to give his paper "shots" of colors. Next time I will have to find some syringes to paint with too!
I love how this activity lets kids explore gravity and speed and color mixing all at the same time.
Once painted papers are dry you can mount them on colored paper and display them around your house or if you make several of them you can use them to make a colorful holiday banner!
Have you tried drip painting before?
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