Pinterest Project: Toddler Painting Take 2

I got a lot of positive feedback from the moms in my mommy group about Forest’s recent painting craft. I mentioned perhaps doing a simple craft for the next playdate and when they were all on board I searched Pinterest for a suitable activity. The duct tape name painting was super fun but took a lot of prep and washing up after and I thought it might be a bit overwhelming with 8 or 9 toddlers running about. 

What I was looking for was a more controllable chaos, and I found it in this ‘Mystery Letters’ paint-resist activity that I actually found on the same website (No Time for Flashcards) as the Name/Tape craft. Lots of good ideas on that site! 

Activity and photo source

I decided to use the kids names versus just a letter since many of the kids in Fs play group (including him) are working on name recognition at this age (19-22 months). For this project I needed: 

1) Liquid Watercolors. This is an easier medium than standard watercolor pallets for toddlers since it cuts out the step of dipping the brush in water and then mixing with the solid watercolor paint.

2) Paint tray or other container. I have a paint tray for Forest but since there were so many kids I also just used some of his small snack bowls and dixie cups. A friend of mine uses an ice tray when her little one paints which I thought was pretty genius. 

3)Paint brushes with chunky handle. Sponge brushes also worked really well for this particular craft and I got a pack of 8 at Target for about $5. 

4) Watercolor paper. Um, to me this appears to be just regular paper but Crayola markets it as special watercolor/marker paper. Whatevs, it was $3 for a 50 page pack and it did the trick. 

5) Plastic drop cloth or just a plastic table cover. Something to protect the splash zone. I had an old wipe-clean table cloth from Target that we used at Forest’s Halloween Birthday Party and it worked perfectly. 

6) A white crayon. This was harder to find that I thought. White doesn’t come in the standard basic color boxes so I ended up with a 24 pack of Crayolas. I’m sure our little artist will use them at some point in his crafting career. For now he is definitely not allowed to roam the house unsupervised with crayons!   

Ok, so basically, all you do is write their name pretty thickly with a white crayon. It can be really hard to see white crayon on the white paper, so I suggest writing it with some natural light around if possible. I went over each name a few times to make sure it was thick enough that the watercolor wouldn’t bleed over it and the name would be pretty distinct. 

Then I filled each paint container with about an inch of water and then added drops of the liquid watercolor to get the desired vibrancy. 

All the babies had to do was paint over their ‘watercolor paper’ and voila- their names appeared. 

It’s a great tool for teaching name recognition and the letters that make up their name, plus colors as well. 

Obviously, there are lots of different versions of this you could do. I plan on using this as part of Forest’s at home preschool education to feature numbers, letters and colors. You could also draw simple pictures to work on vocabulary too. It’s just a lot of fun for them to get to paint and see a word/letter/number/picture magically appear. 

Eeek! I am so loving this age and sooooo happy that my boy absolutely loves all things art related. If you have any great toddler craft ideas, please pass them along!

Oh and if you're painting with toddlers, always make sure it's non-toxic. Ha!