You’ll love this mess free art activity for kids, especially if you have little ones who love to paint.
Click to read also: 10 Days of Hands On Learning
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This activity is a super-simple way to let your child finger paint without dealing with the mess!
Take a plastic ziploc bag (freezer bags works best, since the plastic is stronger), and add paint or a similar colored substance.
We have used paint, shampoo, hair gel – you name it, and we have probably tried it. I think hair gel from the dollar store is our favorite texture!
You can add food coloring or paint to the non-paint substances. I prefer to use washable paint, since the plastic bag can break, and it’s hard to get food coloring out of clothes – and even off of hands!
You can also add a layer of packing tape over the bag if you have exceptionally curious kids who are likely to try to remove the paint.
Mess-Free Art for Kids
I’ve blogged about this activity before (here and here), but this time I made two improvements: I put a sheet of white paper underneath to allow for greater contrast, and I taped the edges down with masking tape. Painter’s tape
would work just as well, and you could even use scotch tape, although that might be a bit more challenging to remove from the table.
Having the bag stabilized makes it easier to control the paint. This way two children can play together, or one child can explore in greater depth:
We left this out on our little table for several days. Every child who came over (and there were many) was intrigued. Several of the parents were, too!
Lily may have been the most excited of all!
Have you tried this mess free art activity? Do you have an art activity you think my kids would enjoy?
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MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
I’ve never successfully done this activity because I never got the tape on correctly. I do love the idea though. :)
Wow! I really want to try this with my almost 2 year old. I think I will tape it down to his high chair tray…theres a second tray that snaps over the main one. It would probably keep him busy when I’m putting the finishing touches on dinner xD!
Great idea!
You have some really great ideas here. My clients would probably love it if I stopped making a mess with your Mess Free Art activities!
Excellent! Mess free, it’s a brilliant concept!
I think I just had a “momgasm” reading this article. You have quite simply just savedmy sanity! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
So glad you like this idea!!!
Came across this on pinterest and had to take a closer look. I’ve seen paint-in-a-bag activities before, but I really love the idea of taping it down and leaving it where the littles can come back to it several times over the course of a few days. Re-pinning, if you don’t mind, and doing this when my little guy wakes up from his nap! :)
So glad you liked our adaptation! Thanks for pinning and sharing, too!
Just found this from mama pea pod…brilliant!!! Pinned it too!!
Thank you!!!
I love this! I want to do crafts with my toddlers but to eliminate the mess too! I am a happy mama.
Oh, I love this! I’d like to try using this to teach a child to form letters instead of finger paint. Having the white paper under is a great idea. Here’s a post showing how I’ve used finger paint to teach forming letters. http://beginningreadinghelp.blogspot.com/2011/06/handwriting-practice-videos.html
I’m going to have to get this out again, I think I have a three year old bag of paint in our art drawer! Penelope has been cutting everything right now, so I’m curious to see whether she will manage to put a hole in it… I’ve caught her trying to cut up her sisters stuffed animals, the couch, her hair… There is constant paper snow all over our living room. She is so different than Rebecca was! Oy.
None of my kids have been that scissor happy, luckily! Although Lily cut holes in at least two of Johnny’s shirts, and a pair of shorts before I realized she was that competent with scissors!
this is a great activity…thanks!
Great open-ended art fun! I appreciate you posting the improvements, too! I just pinned your post to my Pinterest art board: http://pinterest.com/debchitwood/kids-art-projects/.
Thank you for sharing my post! You have so many good ideas on your Pinterest boards!
This is a great idea. I have never tried this though I have seen it done. I suggested something like this once but was told by Selena, “Finger paints are suppose to be on my hands.” We didn’t push the issue after that. Especially since we worked so hard to get her to understand that it is OK to get our hands dirty.
We’ve never done this but I think I should set it up for New Kid. I still didn’t get my act together for Learning Lab this week! Ah!
Wow! This is a great idea! Definitely going to try it with my lil one. Thank you! :)
I really like how you taped it onto the table. Maybe I’ll see if I can find one of those giant sized ziplocs for this :-)
Awesome! This has been added to my Winter Survival bookmark. :)
Sometimes these easy activities are best. We did it, but Anna was already older than Johnny, and she had only a mild interest in it (we did a version with 2 color paints that were gradually blending in the bag). Once they blended, she was done. I was hoping for some writing attempts :)
What a great improvement, and I love that colour of blue!
That is a great improvement. I need to do this at some point.
So fun!!!!
That looks like such a fun activity! GREAT idea!
I NEED to do this activity with the kids – I keep reading about variations of it. I love the idea of taping the bag down, especially for the wee ones.
One blog I read said they put tempera paint inside a pocket of sealed contact paper. !