Social Distancing and Quarantine with my wonderful 2-year-old has been an experience so far! I am a stay at home mom, so having him home with me every day is nothing new, but what IS new is how quickly he’s growing, learning and developing new skills. Almost faster than I can keep up. What entertained him all day pre quarantine now won’t hold his attention for more than 10 minutes. So I’ve got to get more creative in the ways that I keep HIM creative. Here’s where we are today: Hidden messages to be revealed while water coloring!
So, to start we had to work with what we had:
- The back of his coloring pages he’d already scribbled to his enjoyment
- White Crayon
- Cups/bowls
- Water
- Food Coloring/watercolors
- A paintbrush
Fresh paper is hard to come by in our household, so we are making it work with some recycled paper. I took the white crayon and wrote his name, drew some shapes I know he would recognize, the uppercase and lowercase letters I want to focus on today and tried to draw some of his favorite characters freehand but I’m no artist.
Then I mixed up some food coloring in some cups I had handy. I think watercolors would have worked here just fine, or maybe even Kool-aid, but regular paint is probably too thick. Once mixed, I set him up a space to work his creativity.
He eventually decided to just pour the color water all over the place and abandon the paintbrushes altogether and I still got these wonderful keepsakes to save as one of his first art projects once they dried. This is a fun project for toddlers his age and maybe older to get them excited about creating something and recognizing things like shapes, letters, and the fun surprise of uncovering what looked like a blank paper but turned out to be something else. I think this would be fun with different painting tools too like maybe sponges, rollers, or a dripping tool I was thinking like a turkey baster or a small water gun.
Are you at home crafting with a toddler? Let me know on Twitter what your next project will be! Did you try this project? Tag me in your pictures on Instagram, I’d love to see how it went and what tools you used! Leave me some comments down below if you want to know more about how my toddler and I are keeping busy.
