Home Schooling a Toddler – Art Class

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After yet another disastrous attempt to start Gavin on formal classes, I finally decided I’m not going to bother trying to take him to those toddler classes any more.  His formal education can wait until he’s ready to attend kindergarten.  In the meantime, Mummy will have a little fun starting a little home-schooled project…

I bought Gavin his first set of finger paints on Friday from Times Bookshop and an art block.  As a Times member, I get 10% off all purchases, so the whole lot cost me about RM37.  Just to put it into perspective, the music classes cost us RM40 per class.

Pelikan is a German brand of stationery that we’ve bought before.  We’ve used their crayons and colour pencils and they were pretty good – non-toxic and easily washable so I decided to get their finger paints.  It comes with four pots of colours – the primary colours red, blue and yellow, and green.  They also have three sponges, a roller-sponge and a plastic art smock.

Gavin has never painted before, although he’s played with markers, pencils and crayons.  Usually, he gets me to draw pictures for him (mostly of trains and occasionally fish) but I think he thoroughly enjoyed working on this project without Mummy’s help.

I laid out several sheets of newspapers over the dining table and popped on the smock over his clothes.  Then I gave him a single sheet of paper from the art block, opened up the paints, gave him a few pointers and let him go wild with the colours.

We initially worked on stamping out patterns using the sponges.

Then I showed him how to use the roller-sponge.

Finally, it was no-holds barred finger painting.  I think he loved this part best because the sponges were completely forgotten as he started to dip his fingers in all the pots.  It was only at this point that I realised the wisdom of scooping out the paints in future rather than letting him take them directly from the pots.

As you can see from the photo above, all the paint pots were contaminated with other colours.  Note to self: use a paint palette in future.

I probably should have thought harder before letting him dip his fingers into the paint pots because it was a lot messier than I had anticipated.  In future, I’ll remember to put newspapers on the chair as well – Gavin wiped his hands on the seat cushions as he was climbing off the chair.  There must be something about toddlers and not being able to hear the word “don’t” because I immediately yelled, “Don’t wipe your hands on the chair!”  And what did he do after that?  He wiped his hands on the chair!  Thankfully, the paints came off relatively easily!

Although the paints come off pretty easily, if you want to make your job of cleaning even easier, it’s probably a good idea to let your toddler paint wearing just the art smock and a diaper.  Because then all you have to do is whip him off to the shower for a hose down.

Class lasted about an hour (including set up and clean up) – although Gavin was pretty keen to keep going despite the fact that his sheet was almost completely covered with paint.  He wanted to start painting again after his nap so I guess this activity was a real hit with him.

Here is his completed masterpiece after drying out in the sun for a bit.  What do you think?  Picasso in the making?  I don’t really think this would be too out of place among those abstract pieces of art.  With a little bit more work, I reckon it could look like this or even this, don’t you think?

Although Gavin is pretty keen to use the finger paints again, I think we can work with other materials in future.  Here are some ideas I pick up from the preschool toddler classes:

• stone clay
• plaster fun
• sand paint
• glass paint
• ceramic paint
• batik paint
• decoupage
• digital art
• comic star
• folk art
• Chinese ink painting

I’m sure we can find most of these materials at Art Friend in The Gardens, Midvalley.

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Other posts that might interest you:

• Home Schooling – Week Two in Review
• Art Class: Painting with Crayola Finger Paints
• Home Schooling – A Week in Review
• Early Childhood Education – Formal Classes or Home School?
• Home Schooling a Toddler – Activities

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