This is a simple Easter activity for toddlers – Easter Egg painting!
But I thought I’d change it up a bit and provide a different tool to our usual paint brushes.
This time I offered cotton tips. Or depending on what country you live in, they could be called cotton swabs, cotton buds, ear buds or Q-tips. You know – the things that are perfectly shaped for sticking in your ears even though that’s exactly what you’re not supposed to do with them….
So I set out an invitation to play – three colours of finger paint (which is slightly thicker than normal paint) with a cotton tip in each colour, and some colour paper that I’d pre-cut to a rough Easter Egg shape. Then I asked JJ, my 2 year, 9 month old daughter, to have a look.
JJ loves to paint, so she came straight over, and let out a “ohhh” when she saw the cotton tips. It’s amazing how one small change to the tool or medium instantly intrigues toddlers.
At first she painted how I’d imagined she would – with just one cotton tip at a time.
Which morphed into two or three cotton sticks being bunched together, back in her dominant hand.
Once there was sufficient paint on the paper, she started to notice the texture that the cotton sticks made in the paint. Pretty!
When she moved on to the next egg, JJ put her fist into the paint, and declared that she was “knuckle painting”. Which is all good, as the cotton tips were there as a prompt, rather than a restriction. And of course, knuckles turned into fingers which then turned into whole hands. Nothing quite like the sensation of oooey gooey finger paint smearing is there…
And are her finished Easter Eggs, drying on the balcony. Beautiful!
xxx Danya