I don’t always have my $h!t together. In fact, most days I feel like I’m running a marathon without shoes on (and I only have one kid…how do the mothers with more than one kid do it?!). But sometimes, I impress myself. Therefore, it is worthy of a blog post.
One of my “mom goals” is to do some kind of art activity with DK every month. When I was a kid, my mom sent homemade calendars to my grandparents every Christmas of our artwork and photos of us doing art. It was a nice keepsake, and I actually got my calendars back from my paternal grandparents when they both had passed away.
In January, I started documenting DK’s artistic growth by doing a monthly art project. Obviously, at 6 months…his artistic talent is limited and probably will still be limited at 12 months, so I’m not sure what kind of “growth” we will even see. But hey, at least we will see his footprints and handprints grow over the year. I hope to do a monthly art activity for the calendars over many years, so that one day he can look back and see how he just smeared paint around with his feet at 7 months…but at 3 he was painting with a brush.
Spoiler warning: If you are DK’s grandparent, you may wish to stop reading now…or you won’t be as surprised as you could be Christmas 2017.
Here are my art activities so far:
- January
I took an idea from Pinterest and put a sheet of paper in a ziploc bag, added some finger paints, taped the bag to the floor and let DK smoosh it around during tummy time. He mostly liked scratching the bag with his nails, which I’ll admit made me second guess this whole “mess-free finger painting” claim from the Pinterest mommy blog. Would his tiny baby nails pierce the plastic and smear paint all over his hands? With the stealth of a cheetah would he put his paint-covered fingers in his mouth before I could stop him?
The good news is that Ziploc lived up to its name and kept that paint zipped and locked inside, despite the scratching.
DK also didn’t cry and moan in protest of being on his tummy, so I consider this art project a success.
2. February
As Valentine’s is fast approaching, I thought we’d do a Valentine’s themed painting with DK’s footprints in bright red paint. Perhaps one of my most genius ideas was to do it with him in his Exersaucer Doorway Jumper. This way, his hands were nowhere near the paint, meaning his mouth was nowhere near the paint.
While his feet were already covered in finger paint from the footprints, I got out a big sheet of paper, taped it to the floor with some masking tape and dipped his feet in some more finger paint. He loved smearing it around on the paper!
For clean up, I made sure I had a wet cloth nearby to wipe up any paint splatters that got on the floor, and I prepped a mixing bowl of warm water. When he was done painting, I put his feet in the water to splash around a bit, which he also loved. So clean up was mostly just wiping up a few water splashes and drying off his feet.
Stay tuned for future art projects with DK!
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