Acorn Painting

 See these purple painted beauties? This is Kenna's idea of a great day! :)

What I planned- Kenna would roll acorns through paint to create some nature paintings. Great idea.

 First Daddy and Kenna went for a walk and came back with a pocketful of acorns.  Perfect.

Kenna wanted purple, and with some coaxing, I got her to mix the blue and red to practice color mixing. She wasn't pleased, because she wanted to see the actual bottle of purple paint. Ah well. We were still on track.

My awesome plan to roll acorns in paint dissolved into full-hand painting and lots of paint splattering in less time than it took to read this sentence.
 

Don't get me wrong- the acorns WERE covered in paint...

but with less rolling, and more brushing!

Oozing paint between her fingers, stamping with her hand, and smearing paint all over the place. It was becoming a lot messier than I had planned...

But soo much learning and exploring was going on, I let her keep at it. Once your toddler is covered in purple paint, there is no turning back.

At the end of the session, we did have a few acorn tracks across our paper, along with lots of purple handprints! Masterful! :)

Scrub Brush Painting

Materials: Paper, tray for paint, paint, and a scrub brush (got ours from Dollar Tree.)Strip your toddler (mine is 31 months) and get to work! I only allowed her two paint color choices today- I really wanted the focus to be on the cool patterns that the scrub brush makes. She chose purple and orange. Lovely.

Stamping with the scrub brush made "cookies" according to Kenna. She really got into this! Don't put out a lot of paint at a time. The scrub brush holds a LOT of paint...

Dab, dab dab. Smear, scrape, dab.

To say that she enjoyed this is an understatement. She created 7, SEVEN, beautiful pieces of art. (Some days it is impossible for my little artist to even pick up the brush... :))

I love the effects of the scrub brush, and how Kenna blended colors. She spent a good 30 minutes painting, and would announce "done, more paper!" every once in a while. This activity ended up being totally mess-free, since she was too enthralled with the scrub brush to bother with finger or elbow painting. :)

Okay- I lied. It wasn't totally mess-free. You see, "Do Myself" wanted to carry her own pictures to the hallway to dry... and she dropped one...and it landed face-down...