I'm a new mom. I'm also an artist and art educator. That's why it felt entirely odd to me that in the three months that my son has been in my care, he had not completed one art project! Not one! Ok, so he may still be working on holding his head up and grasping objects and knowing what life is, but still! We had shown him how to hit a drum, pluck a ukulele, grasp book pages, and barrel roll across the living room floor, but our refrigerator remained sadly empty of masterpieces.
Most art fun for babies seems to begin when they can sit up. I decided I couldn't wait that long. My son has recently acquired a fondness for tummy time, but he tends to get completely frustrated after a while because he can't yet crawl. So an art project for tummy time also had the dual purpose of distraction as well as nurturing creativity.
I thought of a sensory activity I had used with kindergarten classes, in which they "draw" with a finger in a lock top bag filled with paint. I also saw a tweak to this idea on Pinterest in which a piece of paper is placed in the bag and different colors of paint get moved around from the outside of the bag in the same manner. So, a gallon plastic bag, a heavy sheet of white paper, and some masking tape to keep the whole contraption secured to the floor later and we were in business.
When my son woke up from his nap and had finished eating (i.e. satisfied happy baby time), I showed him some different paint colors. The ones that he bonked with his head or smiled at became the chosen ones. I haphazardly squirted those onto the paper inside the bag, zipped it up, then scooted him so that his hands rested on top of the bag. I moved one hand at a time to show him how to drag across the bag surface to squish the paint around. He seems to like the feeling of scratching things with all of his fingers, so that was what he did while he stared at the colors underneath him. After a couple of minutes, I moved him to the other side so that he could reach the rest of the paper. (To be so little that you need to travel across the length of a piece of paper!)
The activity was done when he couldn't hold up his head anymore and started complaining. While it was still wet, I opened the bag and (carefully as possible) pulled out the paper. There was some smearing (pretty much unavoidable and to be embraced as part of the process), but I wanted to make sure it didn't get stuck inside the plastic. I set it aside to dry and finally had my son's first painting for the fridge!
He seemed to enjoy the novelty of the activity as well as the sensation of plastic and squish. Is your daily infant routine feeling stale? Give this a try!
Here's what I used:
Baggies
Paper
Tape
Paint
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