Recently for Mother's Day, my sister (Dude, she's always trying to make me look bad, lol) gave our mother a canvas and magnet of my niece's finger paint art. My niece is 14 months old and it was adorable.
It also made one glaring point obvious. My boys, who are 5 and 2 1/2 years old, have never, ever, finger painted. I don't know why. My brother even bought AJ finger paints for Christmas when he was 3. Of course if you want AJ to use anything that might require him to be outside, Christmas is not the time of year to get it for him, as his asthma usually prevents outdoor activities in winter.
You might ask why I won't let them finger paint inside. Two words sum it up: "rental deposit". The last thing I wanted was to get finger paint in the carpet. Of course now that we have been here for nearly five years I realize that the carpet is going to have to be replaced anyway. This still didn't prevent me from using the fairly temperate weather outside as an excuse for their first experience.
While they were napping I wrapped the easel in parcel paper (and priority packing tape). I metered out the paint in plastic cups and set the easel outside. Once they were up I had them don just pants and head outside to start the fun.
At first I had to encourage them to dig in, but they got the idea pretty soon. Both enjoyed it immensely.
Idea for next time: the Crayola Washable Finger Paint is more gel than paint. It made it hard to do hand prints and to mix colors. So next time I'll stick with standard tempera paint.
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