Earlier on the year the children had a lovely sensory time pushing finger paint around in a zip lock bag – all the fun without the mess that some children just don’t like.

The Rockabye Butterfly blog mentioned doing the same activity but with paint in the bags instead of finger paint.

We tried it and it was very interesting to see the difference.

Whereas the finger paint tends to quickly flow back together …

the paint remained apart long enough for the children to be able to draw and write in it.

And of course the cool sensation of the plastic and fluidity of the paint …

was totally irresistible to the children!

When the children painted their fantastic foil frames on CD cases …

we noticed one child used fingers to create a beautiful swirly pattern.

We thought the group might enjoy doing this on a large scale, so covered our removable table top in foil …

then plopped out big blobs of pastel coloured metallic paint …

then let them go to it!

It was so smooth and slippery …

across the tinfoil surface.

They LOVED it!

The next day we mixed edicol dye with wall paper paste …

to create a thicker, more translucent medium …

and they had as much fun with this as they did with the other.

We are noticing that the children are much more into writing on and in anything these days!

If you have been following our blog for a while you may have noticed we have a table top with an edge which we like to use for a variety of activities such as imaginary play, science activities, art and so on.

We pulled it out this week for finger painting – wall paper paste and food colouring mixed together.

We tend to put out the primary colours when we do this sort of activity as it is another opportunity for the children to experiment with colour mixing.

Some children really get stuck into it and end up with it all up their arms …

They love it!!!

Using a variety of implements …

they made all sorts of patterns in the paint …

including writing their favourite words – their names.

As some children don’t like getting mucky, we wanted to give them a similar experience without having to get their hands dirty …

so we put some finger paint into snap lock bags and taped the openings closed.

Then, just in case the children were a bit exuberant, and the bags popped …

we put them into trays to catch any spills.

By putting two different coloured paints into the bags …

the children could still experience their colour mixing …

mess free!

This is a wonderful way the children can still experiencing the joy of pattern making and that wonderful squishy feeling.

So sensual …

so cool to the touch …

and so much fun!