I was contacted by Vicky recently about doing a guest post and when I went to check out her site, I knew I had to share it with you. With winter coming, and more time indoors on it’s way as well, I have been trying to gather ideas for things to do with Little Monkey while we brave the cold. Mess for Less has become one of my go-to sites for things to do with Little Monkey. And, they are all educational activities! From fine motor skill development to letters and numbers, it’s all fun at Mess for Less. Today, Vicky is here to share some awesomeness with all of you… so, let’s get to it!
Hello While He Was Napping readers! I am super excited to be here today! I am Vicky, and at Mess For Less, I blog about kids crafts, activities and games with an emphasis on budget friendly fun. I am a former Preschool and Kindergarten teacher and now a mom of three kids all age 3 and under. I like to keep them busy with various creative and educational activities (less time for them to fight). One of our favorite things to do is paint. With the weather turning cooler we were inspired to make some Fall prints. What I love about these prints is that they are simple but can be used to make some more elaborate crafts like the Hand print Wreath I will be sharing later in this tutorial.
Here are the supplies you will need:
Paint in Fall colors
Tray for paint
White paper
Scissors
Glue or tape
Pencil
Large Styrofoam or paper plate
Prints are super easy to make. Just squirt some paint on a tray – we used some fun fall colors – but you can change them up depending on the season or your mood. We used five colors here, but I have done 3 in the past and had them work just as well.
Next, just give your child a sheet of white paper (I like copy paper because it’s inexpensive) and have them place it on top of the paint on the tray. Then push and smush. Or you might prefer the pat and splat. I’ve got a million of these. Did I mention I taught 5 year olds?
The next step is my kids favorite. I call it the “peel and reveal.” They are always so excited to peel the paper off and see what designs they have made. Every one is unique and you can make quite a few prints before you have to add more paint to your tray. Honestly, the biggest challenge for me is trying to find places to put all the prints to dry. You will want to make around 10 prints to make sure you will have enough for your hand print wreath.
Even my littlest one, at 21 months old, was able to make prints.
For the next part of this project your prints will need to be dry. The next day when ours had dried, I used a pencil to trace the kids handprints onto our Fall prints. I don’t have any pictures of this step since I was doing the tracing and I am also the photographer. Hey, I’m a one woman show! So the littlest one was not into having her hand traced. As soon as I started tracing her hand, she started screaming and crying and carried on for a good 20 minutes. So I only used my older daughters hand prints. After you trace you child’s hand prints, you can cut them out. I ended up with 22 handprints. I think as long as you have around 20, you’ll be fine.
This next part can be done while they are napping. I used a Styrofoam plate that was about 10 inches wide. A large paper plate would work as well. If you don’t have any of these items, you can cut a loop out of some cardboard. Use what you have on hand. You will be cutting the inside of the plate and leaving a ring to use as the base from your wreath.
Then you will want to start gluing your hands on the wreath. I started with 4 hands at opposite points just so I would have a good idea about the spacing and make sure I didn’t run out of hands. I used a hot glue gun, but I tried this with tape and it worked just as well.
Filling up the wreath.
If you have extra hands when you have finished covering the plates, you can always overlap them and make the wreath look a little more full.
Now all that’s left to do is hang and enjoy! It’s tough to see in this photo, but because the edge of the plate comes up a bit, the wreath stands out more.
You can see it better here. I love the look of this simple hand print wreath and my kids were so thrilled when they woke up and saw what I had made with their artwork.
If you liked this idea and want to do more print making with your little ones check out another project we did using blocks – Block and Paper Towel Prints.
Thanks to Krista for allowing me to share! I hope to see you over at Mess For Less. Please stop by and say hi! We don’t bite. Well my youngest does, but we’re working on that.
