MINI MONDAY: NO MESS COLOUR-MIXING CARDS

What would you like to celebrate? Draw attention to a special event or show someone you care by creating this no-mess artistic masterpiece that’s sure to tickle your senses!

Materials

• Cardstock
• Large sized freezer bag
• Painters tape
• Paint
• Scissors

Directions:

• Place your piece of cardstock in your freezer bag. Ensure that the freezer bag is large enough to be able to lock tightly with the cardstock inside. Use scissors to trim your piece of cardstock if it is too large
• Take your cardstock out and fold it in half
• Use painter’s tape to create a design on your card. Allow your little one to pull, tear, and arrange the painter’s tape as desired
• Unfold your card and squeeze blobs of paint onto it. Allow your little one to squeeze the paint, or squeeze the bottles together to help develop fine motor skills. Squeeze more paint for bigger blobs and less paint for smaller blobs. Add a variety of blobs of different colours and sizes all around your paper
• Carefully place your paper inside the freezer bag – but don’t worry too much if it smears a bit on the way in! Seal the freezer bag so that the paper and paint remain safely locked away
• Place the freezer bag on a table and let your little one apply pressure to mix the paint around. They can poke it, smear it, and swirl it to spread it all around the paper! As they do this, talk about how the paint feels inside the bag
• When your little one is all done, open the bag and take out the cardstock. Don’t worry if it scrapes against the side of the bag on the way out! Leave the paper out to dry
• Once it’s dry, have your little one pull the painter’s tape off of the card. Depending on how much paint has covered it, you may want to start pulling an edge up for them, then allow them to continue
• Marvel at your fantastic card! Work together with your little one to fill the inside with a super sweet message!

Keep the fun and learning going! Can you…

• Guess which colours will be created when you mix the paint inside your bag?
• Create 3 different secondary colours on your card?
• Design your card with the first letter of the recipient’s name?

Essential Learning Experiences

Developing Sensory Awareness
Sensory development allows children to make sense of the information being received by their senses. It includes touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. This week’s craft helps to promote sensory development and awareness by allowing children to experience the sensation of manipulating the paint inside of the freezer bag, and watching as the paint mixes to create new colours.

Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills are developed when children learn to use their smaller muscles, like the ones in their hands, fingers, and wrists. Fine motor skills are used for everything from picking up a utensil to eat, buttoning clothing, and holding a pencil when learning to write.

This craft helps to support the development of fine motor skills by inviting children to practice using their smaller muscles by squeezing paint out of the bottle (with a stronger squeeze for more paint, and a weaker squeeze for less paint), and grasping and pulling the tape to design and reveal their card!