This month the toddlers explored painting with string! Each child picked the colour of paint they wanted to use. They were then given a pot of paint with a small piece of string hanging over the edge.
Emma and David gently lifted the string and held it up in the air revealing the length coated in paint. David squeezed the top of the string with his other hand, pulling down creating a small pile of paint on his paper. He then used his paint covered hand to finger paint. Emma pulled the string along her paper & said “yellow paint” as it appeared on her paper. Roman carefully removed the string from the pot ensuring he didn’t get it on himself. He dropped it onto the paper and lifted it back up to see the green paint left behind. Sebastian, Beau and Micah pulled their strings around their papers leaving paint trails. Sebastian pointed to a part of his paper where his painted hand had been resting and said “what’s this? Oh, my hand!”.
This experience allows toddlers to explore painting in a new way. Using the string strengthens fine motor skills, gives a different final result and teaches another way of doing something. This also offers cause and effect learning, what happens if I pull the string or what happens if I pile the string in one spot? To further expand this experience, we can do it again but offer different thicknesses and textures of string, ribbon or yarn!
