Painting with Toddlers

At the beginning of the summer I stocked up on art supplies and simple things to keep us busy.  I bought a set of Crayola paints (washable, of course) and the girls mostly demolished that today.  So, how do you paint with two year old twins?  This is what we did and what I would do differently next time.

First, think mess.  Two year olds are all about exploring everything: color, texture, taste, etc....  I covered the table with a piece of cheap plastic drop cloth.  My mom had a vinyl table cloth that worked great.  A friend of ours went to the fabric store and bought some clear vinyl to cover her pretty table cloths.  I thought that was a great idea.

Table covered, check!  One color paint pot open, check!  Paint brushes, check!  Bed-headed toddlers, check!

This is how we started out.  One color.  Nice.  Neat-ish.

This is where we ended up.  Not too bad, but there are two t-shirts soaking in dishwater.  Dishwater is a miracle cleaner.  I learned that from some awesome parent friends.

Now, what I plan to do next time:

• Save the empty paint pots
• Refill empty paints with homemade cheap paint (water, corn starch, food coloring, and liquid soap)
• Could put paper inside a cookie tray to contain the mess (don't remember where I read this, but I've read it on a few mommy blogs)
• Buy some t-shirts at thrift shop for artsy activities
• Set them up at the table and let them go! I could have gotten some work done nearby because they were so into the painting.
• Thought about a paper plate "palette" instead so that I don't have to open/close colors for the girls.  Read several places that you can recycle bottle caps into a palette by gluing them onto a paper plate or cheap plastic plate.  I think I'll just put some blobs of paint onto a paper plate and let them go.
• Sponge-painting!  Probably way easier for them to manipulate than the paint brushes. 

Overall, it was a good way to kill an hour and the girls had lots of fun talking about colors.  They were very impressed with the water changing colors.   It's now 9:20 and we have a long way to go until naptime.  Next up:  bike ride around town, park and playground, haircuts?, lunch!  Then it's sweet, sweet naptime.