Everything I do with Ellerie these days (besides our book reading routine or trips to the park) feels about five minutes long. Her attention span is growing, but…she's two.
I wanted to share a cute and simple project we made over the weekend… a wooden E for her wall and a few tips for painting with toddlers.
We paint almost everyday that she's home (and at daycare she usually paints too). Normally we keep it simple with watercolors and then my "plan" is to just let her at it (we use a lot of scratch paper and not too much water). She's gotten familiar with holding the brush, dipping the paint, etc. It's pretty normal routine around here.
But this project was a little different because we were going to use craft paint (I actually used the little paints from this craft project but any craft paint would have worked). The wooden letter I picked up at Target in the office supply section for a few dollars.
I knew this could be a brown mess quickly and to try and keep things as simple as possible, I used a different paint brush for each color. I handled the paint dipping and just handed her colors on request. "Purple? You got it. Yellow? You got it. Blue? No, not blue? Okay, purple again? You got it."
Another trick I've learned is that it helps to give her suggestions of what to paint. Like "Ellerie, can you paint Grandpa?" Or "Ellerie, do you want to paint the sun?" or "Can you show mama how to paint a dog?" Of course it's all an "abstract Grandpa, sun or dog" but it gets her excited to connect the paint with the paper (or in this case letter) and she likes to point out later what she painted ("Grandma! Coco! Mama!")
It goes without saying (I hope!) that this was much more "organized" than a normal craft session. I would never say "structure your kiddo's art time!" on a constant basis but it worked well for getting this letter painted and she's SO excited to see it hanging on her wall ("I paint it!").
My last trick is to make sure you date the art! This is what my mom drills into me constantly and I'm working on getting an age on everything.
enJOY it 
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