List of fun things do with paint and your kids.

Paint is fun and kids love to be artistic and express themselves, or just to make a mess and have fun! Anyway try to make sure that you find safe non-toxic paint when you are doing the following activities, that you also supervise your kids as well, cover up the surface your painting on, unless you want to have a rainbow colored kitchen table or carpet, and also make sure your child is wearing a smock, or something that you don't mind getting paint on. (One of dad's or mum's old shirts makes a cool smock for little kids) One way to help get paint out of clothes, if it does end up in them, is to put a healty dash of liquid detergent in the paint, this seems to help it wash out of clothes more easily.

Potato Stamps.

This one is pretty easy, get yourself some potatoes, cut them in half and have fun trying to make a shape in one half of the potato, then you can print it on the paper and make pictures. If you find it hard, just try to make simple shapes, triangles and squares for example- you can teach the little ones their shapes and also you can make stuff. ( One triangle at the top, one square at the bottom- equals a house!)

Toys in the paint.

My kids had fun putting cars, dinosaurs and action figures into paint and then pressing them on to paper to make different shapes, you could try the same!

Paint blobs and straws.

You might want to do this with older children and make sure they don't suck! Put some quite runny paint on the paper and then let the kids blow it about making lots of shapes.

Painting with water

This one is sort of related to painting, although there is no paint involved, give your kids a brush and a cup of water, let them go around outside 'painting' you don't even need to clean up! My kids loved it.

Hands and Feet

Messy but fun, put hands and feet in the paint and let them make marks, you can even keep them and as they grow let them do it again, to see how their feet and hands have grown. You can practice numeracy by letting them count their toes and hands.