Hold-Hands Color Mixing Handprints

Baby A is nothing like how Big A used to be at 18 months. As it appears, Baby A seems to prefer hands-on learning a lot more. Showing her a book of colors and pointing to colors through the day does not seem to capture her interest. I was (am still) looking for fun ways to introduce colors. What’s more fun than PAINT? Whenever we set out paint in the back yard, this is what happens with Baby A. Looks at paint excitedly and squeals “paint”. Scoops a handful of paint Thinks it is soap and starts slathering it all over her palms. Slowly spreads the paint to fore arms then to her belly while making that paint enters her belly button and then on to the legs… May be one of these days she will know the difference between soap and paint!

1. Finger paint
2. Butcher paper
3. Tape

Since she already had her hands covered with blue, I helped her make a hand print on a sheet of butcher paper taped down to the patio floor. Then Big A made a hand print with red.

Still they had so much paint left on their tiny hands. Later came the fun part, the girls held their hands together and started rubbing them. This was met with tons of squeals of joy.. Once they were done, they took a look at their purple hands and were totally excited. Even though Big A understands color mixing, she kept screaming MAGIC, MAGIC to her sister in the hopes of getting her excited. Baby A looked amused by the new color on her hands. She promptly said “Again“ Both of them made purple hand prints on the paper. Later we mixed red and green, yellow and blue, red and white and red and orange and made corresponding hand prints on the paper. When the kids were holding hands trying to mix the colors, they did quite a few dance moves. The held their colorful hands together and jumped around while mixing the primary colors to make more vibrant secondary colors. I had a bowl of water nearby to clean their hands once they were done with one set of colors. Both the sisters were clearly excited by the the concept of holding hands and dancing to make new colors. After 3 iterations, both of them got really playful and started throwing around the paint, making hand prints on mom’s shirt. Daddy B came down and whisked Baby A for a much needed bath. I continued with Big A since she wanted to do feet painting. Mixing the colors with her two feet was a bit tricky but she really got into it and had a ball rubbing her feet together to make a new color. We mixed red and white and made a beautiful pink foot print.

Here is our final color mixing hand prints

I would really recommend to have another adult around if you are working with more than one kid- especially with a toddler. You know, when you have an idea in your head and visualize your kids completely buying your enthusiasm and having fun and if it really lends itsef to reality then it is a thrill. I say this because we have had our series of busts. I would be all jazzed up about a new project and the kids would look at me like “nah.. whatever I’m would actually take a nap instead of this.”Not today, definitely not today!