One of  the play prompts for #march_play was ‘rainbow’. I’d been really looking forward to this as I love rainbows and how vibrant the colours are. I’d seen quite a few accounts doing “scrape painting” and wanted to give this a try with a rainbow twist! 

The equipment needed was;

• Painting area – tuff tray/activity mat.
• Painting clothes or aprons.
• Strips of white card.
• Window scrapers (like you have for your car).
• Rainbow colour paints (water based, non toxic). 
• Felt tip pens in rainbow colours.
• Flips chart paper/large paper.
• Wipes.

I set this activity up on our tuff tray I put two strips of card at the bottom as our practice strips then the others in the shape of a rainbow. 

Onto the card I wrote the names of the colours in their associated colour or put dots of colour as prompts for where my son should aim the paint. He then squeezed a blob of paint onto these prompts to ensure there were in the right order. My son LOVES squeezing paint so it was quite tricky to get him to not squeeze too much – the promise of BIG squeezes later seemed to work!! 

Once the paint was in line I positioned the window scraper and explained what he had to do. I did it with him for the first little bit but then he insisted he could do it by himself, and actually he could! The rainbow colours looked gorgeous!!! He then moved on and did the same all the way round the rainbow. 

After he had finished we were left with a beautiful rainbow!!!

After this he wanted to paint more with the window scrapers so I moved our rainbow paintings and put down some big flip chart paper and said he could experiment however he wanted to. He chose to squeeze out a lot of paint and then scrap it all over the tuff tray. He named all the colours as he squeezed them out.

He made some lovely patterns and had a lot of fun mixing everything together into a big brown mess!!! Of course hands and feet got involved too! I love just letting him explore and have fun I think it really let’s him learn and create independently which is so lovely to see.

The rainbow paintings he made were gorgeous and so I think I am going to frame bits of them and with the practice strips we went on and did another activity; ‘Rainbow Handprint Butterflies’. The equipment needs to make these was;

• Making area – tuff tray/activity Mat.
• Rainbow paintings.
• Scissors.
• Pen/pencil.
• Card.
• Large lolly pop stick/tongue depressor.
• Paint sticks/paint.
• Pipe cleaners.
• Double sided sticky tape.

I drew around my son and little girls’ hands on some card to make templates. I then cut out the handprints from the rainbow paintings we had made. Two of my son’s and two of my daughters for each butterfly. 

I put double sided sticky tape on the handprints and my son helped to stick these onto the tongue depressor ‘bodies’. We then stuck on pipe cleaner antennae and my son painted the bodies of the butterflies with his new paint sticks! 

Lastly we stuck on some googley eyes and our gorgeous rainbow handprint butterflies were complete! 

I totally love a handprint craft as to me they are memories for us to keep. I liked this activity especially as it was our process art creations that formed the basis of the handprints and my son helped to make and finish decorating the butterflies rather than me just making them on my own. Why don’t you have a go at making handprint butterflies from your messy art creations!!! 

I m now co-hosting #april_play on Instagram so please follow our new play prompts and these wonderful accounts for even more creative ideas!!! 

One of the play prompts for #march_play was ‘Spring Sensory’. I used this prompt to do an activity I had been longing to do; ‘Shaving Foam Marbling’ with a spring twist! The equipment needed was:

• Tuff tray/activity mat.
• Painting clothes/aprons (my son uses his old puddle suit).
• Tray  (I used a ceramic lasagne tray).
• Shaving foam.
• Food colouring.
• Pots.
• Pipettes.
• Something to swirl the colours with – lollypop sticks/cotton buds.
• Card to make prints with – I used white card in easter egg and duckling shapes.

I explained to my son about dropping on the colours to the shaving foam first and as he is loving the pipettes at the moment he was very keen to do this!

He then chose the cotton bud to swirl the colours around – he loved watching them all mix together and I had to ask him to stop briefly to do the prints otherwise he would have continued until it was a big mess (he did get to do this later though I promise!)

I had completed a test run of this activity with different coloured card cut outs – I found that pure white worked the best as coloured card distorted the swirled colours and did not seem as vibrant. I gave my son the cut out shapes and asked him to push them down into the foam a little bit and then lift them back out.

 I then scraped off the excess foam to leave behind some gorgeous marbled patterns!!

After making these lovely prints I asked my son what he wanted to do and his answer was to “mix a potion” – no surprise there!! He also mixed in the magnetic letters so we had a game of hunt the letter too!

I loved the results of this activity and it really is easy to set up and do. It produces some gorgeous works of art; I am planning on making the final products into Easter cards!

Why not have ago yourself and don’t forget to check out #march_play on instagram and share any of your lovely creations!!

I’m currently co-hosting #march_play on Instagram with a bunch of lovely other accounts;

Each day we have a play prompt to guide our activities. My favourite so far has been ‘fairytales’. When looking at this prompt it dawned on me that I hadn’t really read any traditional fairytales with my son as we mainly read the newer ‘Gruffalo style’ books. I therefore saw this as an opportunity to share one of my favourite fairytales with him; ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. In the morning I told him the story and we then watched an animated version. He really got into the whole “Who’s eaten my porridge?” and the concept of different sizes.

In the afternoon I set up an invitation to play based on the story. Here is the equipment I set out;

• Tuff tray (could use activity mat).
• Painting clothes (I now use an old puddle suit which is great!!)
• Different sized card strips (width = small, medium, large).
• Paw print stamps – small and medium were potato stamps I had cut out, the large one was a gravy granules pot with three corks strapped to it with hairbands (a rare moment of genius for me!)
• Brown, red, yellow and blue paint (water based, non toxic).
• Paper plate.
• Paint brushes.
• PVA glue.
• Card cut outs of different sized bears.
• Cotton wool/Pom Poms/tissue paper to collage with.
• Three different sized bowls with matching spoons.
• Porridge oats.
• Lolly pop sticks (added later for mixing).
• I’d also found some cuddley toys which played out the story we went through earlier (I moved these before we got messy though!)

The first thing my son wanted to explore were the bear prints! Whenever we’re out and about he’s always looking for “tracks to follow” and the thought of making his own seemed to really excite him. He squirted out the paint himself and painted onto the bottom of the stamps.

I helped with the first print to show him how you have to push downwards firmly. After this he was away and went through the Daddy bear, Mummy bear and Baby bear footprints very quickly!

Then it was the porridge he was interested in. I reminded him of the porridge in the story and we went through how; Daddy bear’s was ‘too hot’ and a hot colour is red, so we mixed the red paint into his porridge in the big bowl.

We then moved onto Mummy bear’s porridge, in the medium sized bowl, which was ‘too cold’ and mixed the blue paint in with that. Finally, baby bear’s porridge in the small bowl was ‘just right’ and I felt yellow would suffice for this!

Once we’d mixed up our ‘porridge paint’ we added some PVA glue to each bowl to make it ‘sticky porridge paint!’ My son then experimented with painting the bear’s, pouring the porridge paint everywhere, mixing it with his hands and doing a bit of collage. Mainly he was interested in making mess which is the whole point with messy, arty, sensory activities!!!

After this he went back to the idea of paw prints and wanted to make his own! So we got the brown paint back and he did some footprints on a piece of card to go with the bear prints!

Inevitably this activity was quite messy requiring a deep clean in the tub afterwards! This play prompt had lots of different levels and it was lovely to take the theme throughout the whole day and include sharing some of my childhood memories with my son. Why don’t you have a go too with your favourite fairytale!

My son is now 3 years old and he has a great imagination and LOTS of ideas so this activity was all down to him! His brief to me was:

“I want to paint with gloopy glue, marbles and big paper!”

This was quite a specific request (as things often are with 3 year olds) so he obviously had an idea in mind! I got all the desired items (and a few more he asked for along the way) and we just followed his imagination and had a fantastically fun messy afternoon!!

Equipment;
– Plastic activity mat/tuff tray (for your painting area).
– “Big paper” – We used flip chart paper.
– Masking tape.
– Marbles.
– Paint pots (I use old yoghurt pots/fruit cups).
– “Mixing things” – lollypop sticks and paint brushes.
– Paints (water based, non toxic).
– Water.
– “Gloopy glue” otherwise known as PVA glue.
– Wipes.
– Card cut out butterflies (could be any thing to make prints onto).
– Old towels, Painting clothes/aprons.

We set up our painting area on our new tuff tray (which I totally love and would recommend!) Under specific instruction from my son I stuck the big paper down with masking tape.

We then started mixing up our “paint potions” – the recipe for these was;

• A big splodge of gloopy glue.
• Lots of paint.
• A bit of water.

The potion was then mixed up with a lolly pop stick. Some colours were mixed a bit along the way too.

The “paint potions” were then poured onto the paper in different areas before rolling the marbles through the paint puddles to make lovely patterns across the paper. The marble rolling was really fun we tried to see who could get them from one side of the tuff tray across to the other and see if we could hit each other’s marbles.

After doing this for a bit my son wanted to start mixing the paint up with his hands (one of his favourite activities!) and pour a bit more water onto the painting to make all the colours mix in more.

We also lifted on edge of the paper so the paint fell down like rain.

At this point the temptation to get right into the painting and stomp all over it was too much so he asked to walk on the paint. By this point it was quite slippy so I had to hold him but he enjoyed “ice skating” on the paint then making footprints on a new piece of paper!

The paint was now quite marbled so we did some printing onto some butterfly cut outs which looked lovely!

As you can imagine we were VERY messy after all of this experimenting so a bath was definitely needed prior to cleaning up.

As with lots of messy art this activity was more about the process and letting my son take the lead rather than having a final product in mind. After doing everything my son wanted the large paper was too messy and wet to save but we did take lots of lovely photos of the patterns we made along the way as well as the butterfly prints. It really was fun watching my son think what he wanted to create and see where his imagination took him it made for a really special afternoon so I’d thoroughly recommend you give it a try sometime!

Don’t forget to share any of your makes and follow us at http://www.megaawesomemessyart.com and on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
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With the seasons changing the beautiful autumn colours are everywhere and my son and I have loved going on walks and collecting lots of autumn treasures!

He loves crunching and kicking through the leaves and collecting conkers, acorns, sticks, leaves and anything else’s he can find!

So with all of these wonderful autumn treasures filling up our house I thought we should use them in one of our MAMA afternoons and create some fabulous art!

Equipment;

– Plastic activity mat.
– Old clothes or aprons.
– Card/cardboard/paper/toilet rolls.
– Paint pots.
– Different coloured paints (autumnal colours, water based & non toxic).
– Autumn treasures – leaves, sticks, conkers, acorns, pine cones etc.
– Paint brushes/sponges.
– Wipes.

Step 1: Preparation;

Whilst out and about start collecting up autumnal treasures and when you have enough it’s time to have some messy fun!

I set up the activity space inside. I put the activity mat on the table together with the other equipment, and then we got into our painting clothes.

Step 2: Autumn messy mash up time!

My son squeezed all the paints out into the pots and then started experimenting with all of the autumn treasures. I had no firm plans for this activity just wanted to see what he wanted to do and things just kind of evolved from there.

He used the autumn treasures to make marks on the card, and also enjoyed dunking them in the paint till they were fully covered.

We sponge painted the leaves to make shape outlines and also completely covered them in paint to hide them!

We were running out of some of the colours and my son enjoyed squeezing these bottles to make the paint spray over his pictures! This was quite messy but he enjoyed it so much and it looked great so was well worth it.

We of course also got hands involved to make handprints too – it’s like my sons signature now!

We were thoroughly entertained for a good hour and we had some lovely pictures by the end of it all!

Step 3: Tidy tidy tidy up!

We were both pretty messy by the end as was our activity space. We put our paintings to the side to dry, our reusable bits to soak and put other things in the bin. We wiped down the excess paint and then we both required a good bath! I then did a better clean up later on.

We both really enjoyed this experimental afternoon and would highly recommend just going with the flow sometimes and seeing how things turn out!

Don’t forget to share any of your activities and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!

To help my son learn about shapes I decided to incorporate a shape theme to one of our MAMA afternoons. The shape I chose was circles as there were so many things which were circular around the house that we could use as mark making tools!

Equipment;

– Plastic activity mat.
– Old clothes/aprons.
– Different coloured paints (water-based, non toxic).
– Paper plates.
– Paper/card.
– Circular/spherical mark making tools: different bottle tops, jar lids, corks, balls, round sponges, old sticky tape rolls etc.
– Wipes.

Step 1: Preparation;

For a little while I collected up anything I could find which was circular/spherical so I had a good mix of different sizes and textures. Then once I had a good collection I set up our painting space with the plastic activity mat, mark making tools and paints which I squirted out onto paper plates (an older child can help with this part). I then put out round paper plates to paint on – in keeping with the theme! My son really enjoyed this activity so when I ran out of paper plates we also used pieces of card to continue the activity – always good to have spare paper/card to help activities last longer!

Step 2: Circles, circles everywhere!!

I chose a mark making tool first and showed my son how to dip it into the paint and then put it on the paper plates to create circles. I spoke to him about this shape being a circle and encouraged him to say it too! He enjoyed the freedom to try out all the different Mark making tools, he enjoyed rolling the balls through the paint too and using his hands (not circles but finger prints are close!).

Step 3: Tidy tidy tidy up!

I put the reusable mark making tools into soak so we could use them again another day. We put our creations on the side to dry, wiped down the excess paint and then had a bath. I then cleaned up properly later.

We’re now on the hunt for other shapes to use for another fun MAMA afternoon!! Don’t forget to follow us at http://www.megaawesomemessyart.com and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!

As is traditional in April it’s been raining quite a lot, which has been fantastic for puddle jumping but has also meant quite alot of time spent inside. We went to buy some new paints which we could use to make some rainy style pictures and the perfect ones were…… watercolours of course!

Equipment
– Plastic Activity mat/old towels.
– Old clothes/aprons.
– Watercolour paints.
– Water pots.
– Paint brushes.
– Card/paper.
– Pom-Poms.
– Wipes.

Step 1: Preparation.

Set out your activity mat on the floor or table. Put out your watercolour paints, paper/card, paint brushes and fill your water pots. This is all I had ready when we started this activity but then half way through my son requested Pom-Poms, these actually made the activity a lot of fun and made some great rain drop marks so if you have some get these ready too!

Step 2: Experimenting with watercolours!

We’d not used watercolours before so I had to show my son how to get the brushes wet then rub them onto the watercolour palates and then brush onto the paper. After a few goes of trying to add the water directly onto the palates or putting the palates into the water he finally got it and he was away!

He made a wide range of different marks with the brushes and then asked for Pom-Poms. He really enjoyed getting these wet, rubbing them in the paint and then dropping them onto the paper. They made lovely splash marks! He also enjoyed mixing different colours in the water pots.

Step 3: Tidy tidy tidy up!

Compared to some MAMA activities this was easier to clean up as it was mainly water – so wipes were all we really needed! Therefore if you’re looking for a fun messy activity without too much clean up then watercolours are for you!

So there you are a lovely April shower inspired MAMA activity which is quick and easy and results in some lovely atmospheric paintings!

Don’t forget to share any of your MAMA activities on Instagram, Facebook or twitter! http://www.megaawesomemessyart.com