If you think Baby is moving out of the baroque and ready to make a beeline for their pop art phase, you can help them make like Andy Warhol and explore the infinite variety of art that can be created with stamps, stencils, and repeated images. A few art projects that are especially good for fingers as small as Baby’s include:
- Right at their fingertips: Before Baby goes out and gets any more complicated stamps, try out the most unique ones in the world – the ones right on the ends of their hands! Baby can dip their fingertips into non-toxic ink, paint, or press them against an ink-pad before they get stamping, and they can either coat all their digits in the same hue or pick a different color for every finger (and toe, if you’re daring!) before creating a colorful design on paper.
- Cleaning up: Sponges aren’t just good for scrubbing down the table (and floor, and walls, and ceiling) after an art project – they’re also good for making the art! You can cut sponges into shapes like triangles or squares, and then let Baby dip them into tempera paints and stamp them on paper. Sponge stamps are easy for small fingers to grip and great for making interesting patterns.
- No stamps? No problem: If you have potatoes in the kitchen and are handy with a knife, you can make Baby any kind of stamps they want. Halve a potato, carve a design into the cut end, and then use paint or ink to stamp away! Just keep in mind that even if you’re using non-toxic paints, it’s probably still not a great idea to recycle those potatoes for dinner later – toss them after the artmaking.
There are a million ways Baby can use even just one stamp – give them the chance to show you how!
