This marks my first "Pinterest Project" with Finnegan. Lorelai was not involved in this one because she is off for a fun week with Nana at the cabin. That gave me the perfect opportunity to try out one of the messier projects with just Finnegan (since Lorelai would have eaten more paint than she put on the paper). I started this off with a Pinterest idea for "mess-free" fingerpainting. You just put finger paint in a large ziploc bag and let the kids smear it around. It's a great way to let them experiment with mixing colors to make new colors all while never touching the paint! It seemed too good to be true! ....and it was. Finn was underwhelmed. He kept saying, "when can I open the bag and touch the paint?"
While the project turned out pretty cool, he just wasn't satisfied. He wanted to know when the fun was going to start. So I caved and got out the messy stuff.
After completely changing his clothes (we put on an old shirt, took off his pants completely), I prepared for the messiest activity we have ever done. I am not one of those moms who freaks out about messes, but I never really saw the need to create messes just for the heck of it. My kids are not good at feeding themselves yogurt because I almost never let them do it. I don't like cleaning things up off the floor or changing their entire outfits just so they can have a little fun. Call me crazy, but I like the idea of them actually eating the yogurt, not wearing it or playing in it. Anyway, back to the mess at hand. I decided it was definitely time to let him get dirty. I had already vowed to try some new things and be a cool mom, so here it goes! I put down a large sheet of thick paper and taped it to the table. I put a drop cloth over the chair he was sitting on and covered him with an old apron. I taped down his paper he was going to paint so it wouldn't go everywhere when he really got into it. I put down a few drops of paint and took a deep breath....
It was definitely worth it. He was having so much fun. He loved that his hands were dirty and he was just smearing things all over the table. At first he was timid about "how" to do it. He kept saying "Like this, Mom? Is this right?" I told him he could do whatever he wanted. Just have fun. He was clearly worried that he was doing something that was "wrong" because usually it's a bad thing to get this dirty! But trust me, it didn't take him long to really enjoy it.
He kept holding up his hands and staring at them with a big grin on his face. He was thrilled to get his hands dirty and make some cool pictures.
Here he was saying "Finger Paint Three Goggles!" Daddy was pretty proud of this one. Go Cats!
Near the end he realized that he could actually draw with his fingers. I helped him smear all the paint around to make a background and then he drew with his finger. This was a picture of himself. This was a great activity because he clearly had fun and I got to teach him some things about color mixing. He learned that yellow and red make orange, blue and red make purple, yellow and blue make green, and all the colors mixed together make a purplish brown. It's times like this that make being a mom fun. I feel good that he's learning, being creative and having fun! And it only took about 15 extra minutes out of my day. I can definitely live with that! I think we'll try to do some fun little activity like this every day to break up the monotony. Activity #1 was a success! :)
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