Finger painting is not only interesting and fun, but also very useful. With its help, fine motor skills develop, and the baby also makes his first progress in mastering color schemes. The tools are the fingers and palms of little artists, the “object for smearing” is special paints, and the first teacher is mother. How to organize the first lesson correctly, how to develop fine motor skills? You will find answers to these and other questions in this article.
Developing fine motor skills in a child
Psychologists believe that creative experiments with finger paints can begin at 10–11 months. Even then, the baby can trace the relationship between the paint and the mark on the paper. But it’s better to focus on your child’s individuality. If he can already move freely, crawling or on his feet, and is fully engaged in research activities, it’s time to introduce him to creativity and introduce him to finger paints.
It is advisable to start finger painting in the first half of the day, when the child is more active. The baby will remind you about the end of the lesson, because it is simply impossible for a one-year-old baby to hold attention for a long time. The first lessons, as a rule, do not last long - literally a couple of minutes. In the future, an enthusiastic child can draw for up to 15–20 minutes without stopping.
What do you need for finger painting? First of all, special finger paints, they can be bought in almost any store that has a department of goods for children's creativity. They have the desired consistency and do not require additional dilution with water. When choosing, pay attention to the jars themselves: they must close tightly so that the paint does not thicken too quickly. For your first experiments in fine art, it is better to choose bright, but not “acidic” colors. As for paper, A3 size watercolor sheets are preferred. They are big, the baby will have room to “swing”. And if you take a roll of old wallpaper on which you can draw on the reverse side, then there will be no limit to a child’s happiness. And also make a blank - a green leaf on which the ladybug sits. You will need it.
Step 1.
Taking into account the child’s age, we prepare a workplace: cover the table or floor with oilcloth (newspapers), put a sheet of paper and paint, open a couple of jars. It is better to start getting acquainted with finger paints with one or two colors. At first, the baby is surprised by the very fact that the paint leaves a mark on the paper, and does not try to change colors.
Step 2.
Take your time to dip your baby’s finger in the paint. He may get scared and flatly refuse to “get his hands dirty.” Better show him an example by leaving a long colored line on the paper with your finger or a print of your palm. Then invite your baby to “play around” with you. Celebrate the activity with rhymes or songs.
Step 3.
Now let the baby dip his finger in the paint and run it across the paper. Give your child time to get comfortable and understand that the line on the sheet is the work of his fingers. And then move on to simple game exercises.
Step 4.
Now we take our blank - a green leaf with a ladybug. Invite your child to finish painting her paws and dots on her back using a finger and black paint. Children love it when there is a playful moment in the lesson. This really captivates them. And if they like it, the next “lesson” will be a great success!
Vigilance first!
Before purchasing, check whether the finger paint you choose meets safety standards. Russian manufacturers must indicate the number of the sanitary-epidemiological report. On the packaging of imported paint, pay attention to the presence of the “CE” or “AP” marks. This marking means that the product meets the requirements of European or American standards and is safe for the health of its consumers.
Tips for parents
Parents should show the little ones exactly how to draw a picture with their fingers. The unusual technique of fine art should interest the child. Use your fingertip to scoop up some paint and make a dot or draw a line on the paper. The baby can repeat this. But you can draw not only with your fingers, but with your entire palm.
Older children enjoy using ready-made templates. You can find them on the Internet and print them or draw them yourself. These are images of fruits, vegetables, animals, transport. They are usually already painted, but have white areas. The child must paint them so that the colors match, or trace the outlines of the drawings .
There are popular pictures that kindergarten teachers use. The finger painting technique is also suitable for depicting natural phenomena. A child can draw the sun, rain, snowfall, and starry night with his hands.
The background is painted over with your fingers, evenly distributing the material over the paper. But you can use colored cardboard. Large images - sun rays, clouds, fish, flowers - are drawn with palms. And small details can be depicted with little fingers, cotton swabs and even toothpicks.
Finger painting will allow you to prepare greeting cards and themed posters for kindergarten. The child will be able to take part in decorating the house for any holiday. And parents will help kids master more complex painting techniques with each new lesson.
Mastering new opportunities
When is it time for a child to start drawing? The earliest is in the second year of life, many parents will answer and... be mistaken. The first artistic experience can be instilled in a child when he is not yet a year old. Of course, it is impossible to give brushes with paints, felt-tip pens or pencils to a baby who has not yet reached the age of one year. But he doesn't need it. The necessary “tools” with him are always his own hands. And all that is required of parents is to provide the child with more freedom for creativity.
Svetlana Lykova, teacher
"Attempt at writing"
6 months - 1 year
Having learned to sit independently, the baby not only expands his horizons, but also frees his hands for a variety of activities. His hand motor skills and, accordingly, his thinking begin to actively develop. It's time for your first drawing lessons!
Of course, these activities cannot be called training, because drawing for such a small child does not at all mean depicting recognizable images. Infant drawing is the development of a new type of activity and the study of new interesting properties of objects, as a result of which the most unexpected applications are found for familiar things. Here is a toddler happily smearing half-eaten porridge or vegetable puree on the table. This does not mean at all that he is playing around and playing pranks to spite the adults. The child explores the material, explores its possibilities, or even creates.
Of course, the unappetizing mess on the table is the least likely to resemble a work of art, but such an activity gives the child great pleasure. However, it is important for parents to remember that for such a young child, the main thing is safety. This applies to everything that falls into the field of his research. Therefore, it is better if the first artistic experiments are associated not with paints, the production of which uses chemicals, but... with food. However, you should not mix the process of nutrition, which is important for the baby, with targeted drawing lessons, so it is better to conduct lessons with a well-fed child, without using foods that make up his usual diet.
For the first artistic experiments, you can pour a little “adult” blueberry yogurt or baby cottage cheese with fruit fillings on the table or feeding table - let the baby smear them with his fingers or the whole palm as soon as he wants. Some of the yogurt or cottage cheese can be warmed up a little, and some can be cooled in the refrigerator.
Mixing warm and cold is just as useful and interesting for a child as colorful ones. And the tactile sensations from such exercises will become much richer. The child's dirty palm can be printed on a piece of paper. It’s not worth keeping such a masterpiece for centuries, but it can be photographed as a souvenir - like your first work of art.
I drew it and... ate it!
1–2 years
All children at this age are not creators, but manipulators. By manipulating objects, materials and forms, they study their properties and capabilities. To understand the world, babies use all types of senses and sensations, including taste. Therefore, even at this age, creative materials should be absolutely safe.
There is no point in getting carried away with fashionable paints for finger painting just yet. Their main advantage is that they can be easily wiped off any surface and washed off any clothing. But the fact that these colors are very bitter does not always prevent kids from trying them. So it’s better to opt again for edible food coloring.
A grown-up child is already able to experience real pleasure from the artistic process. For creative experiments, he can be given paper. It is better if these are large sheets with a rough surface - the reverse side of old wallpaper or whatman paper.
As paints, you can use boiled beets or their juice, bright berries - blueberries, blueberries or black currants, boiled carrots, greens or spinach. Adults themselves can show the child what mark these unusual colors leave on a sheet of paper.
For mom, dad or grandma, it’s enough to smear a puddle of beetroot juice with your finger, crush a bright berry on a leaf or draw a line with a carrot, and the little one will enthusiastically begin experimenting and creating: smearing “paints” with your fingers, clapping your palm on colored blots, changing their shape, mixing unusual paints between themselves.
The child is fascinated by the possibility of magical transformation of shapes and unexpected changes in color. You can show your child how to draw a line with his finger, how to draw a stream out of a puddle, how to connect two multi-colored blots with each other, how to make the footprints of a small bunny or mouse with his little finger, and how to draw a large footprint of an elephant or a bear with a whole palm or fist.
This kind of finger painting is useful not only for the aesthetic, but also for the speech development of the baby - it’s not for nothing that speech therapists love finger games and finger massage so much. By training separate finger movements, the baby stimulates the part of the brain responsible for speech.
You can draw not only with vegetables and fruits. Finger painting paints can be made perfectly from ordinary semolina porridge - you just need to divide it into portions and add harmless food coloring to each. The porridge should not be very liquid, then the finger strokes will be rich and thick.
You can add additions to semolina paints in the form of berries to decorate the “masterpiece” or a spoonful of jam (jam) to create a richer color. Of course, very soon the food picture will turn into a homogeneous and not very attractive mass. But the fascination of the process for the child is much more important than the final result. The baby has not yet developed imaginative thinking, so you should not look for special meaning in his drawings yet - he simply enjoys and is happy with everything he does.
By the way, parents also have something to rejoice here. As a result of “artistic” exercises, children’s fingers were well trained, the child received a rich range of tactile sensations, the stimulation of which contributes to the development of his brain activity and thinking - this relationship has long been proven by scientists.
Enriching the palette
After 2 years
At this age, the child is no longer so interested in continuing to experiment with products. Still, the palette of colors is too poor, the drawings turn out faded and inexpressive. At this age, children begin to actively use bright markers, pencils and brushes for drawing. But this does not mean at all that you should forget about finger drawing as a passed stage. On the contrary, with age, children have new opportunities to master this interesting technique. After two years, a child is able to fantasize, guess specific images in drawn abstractions and develop them. Now a line for him is not just a stick, but a road along which cars drive or the trail of an airplane in a clear sky. A blot is a cat curled up in a ball or a cheerful teddy bear with a barrel of honey. The baby doesn’t just create, he lives out his creativity. All his works are emotionally charged. When drawing mouse tracks, he squeaks like a mouse, and when he traces the road with his finger, he growls like the cars that will drive along it. The baby cannot always create a recognizable image himself, but he willingly develops and complements the proposed images.
Benefits of classes
Drawing in an unconventional palm technique will allow the child to develop the muscles of his hands, and parents will be able to establish psychological contact with the baby. Such activities not only entertain, but also bring benefits:
- develop motor skills;
- give new knowledge about the shapes of objects;
- teach color recognition;
- develop taste.
Regular finger painting classes allow you to strengthen your hand muscles and develop motor skills, and this has a beneficial effect on speech and abstract thinking. The child will be able to learn about new objects by depicting them, and will also become familiar with geometric shapes, different colors and shades. Such home lessons will help parents prepare their child for the first grade of school.
Small objects help develop coordination of movements. Children will be able to expand their horizons and gain new tactile and visual sensations. The child will receive many pleasant emotions from creative activities, he will develop a taste and a craving for beauty. Children express their experiences through colors. Each drawing reflects the joys and fears of a child. Parents should pay attention to what exactly he depicts.
You can start classes from 10-11 months, but the baby should draw only with the help of his parents. It is better to make the first lessons short - 5-10 minutes. Over time, they can be extended to 20-30 minutes.
You should not force your child to draw; it is better to observe his mood. Creativity requires a good mood and inspiration.
Mastering new opportunities
The baby is already old enough to use real art materials - gouache, watercolor or special paints for finger painting. Unlike a brush, the smooth surface of the finger does not hold enough paint to draw a long line, so to create paintings it is better to “dip”, “rub” or “print” paints on paper. To print by hand, the paint must be diluted to the consistency of liquid sour cream and poured in a thin layer onto a flat plate.
It will be useful and interesting for a child to explore the capabilities of his own hand, because with the help of one single palm you can get a huge number of different prints, and by adding your own imagination, turn them into real masterpieces. You can smear, draw and print any abstractions, enjoying the color and painterly flavor. Or - create interesting plot pictures. For example, a print of an open palm with your fingers down can become a cheerful octopus, you just need to draw its eyes and mouth.
With the help of mom and dad's palms, you can draw a whole family of octopuses of different sizes. And plant them on the seabed, with imprinted pebble fingers and waves or algae, which are obtained if you dip four fingers in paint and draw wavy lines in the desired direction. And a closed palm will give an imprint of the silhouette of a fish. All that remains is to finish drawing her fins and tail with your fingers.
The same palms can also turn into magical flowers with finger petals - you can print an entire meadow from them! Or you can “limit yourself” to the wings of a beautiful bird.
Printed palms with pressed fingers can become amazing butterflies, just draw long antennae on them. A hand clenched into a fist produces a round imprint that looks like a shell or a snail's house. In addition, from the resulting circles you can print a snowman, a sun, or a funny little man.
A half-open fist makes an arc.
When printing the pads and phalanges of the fingers, the resulting impressions are rectangles or small segments of different lengths. Each finger has its own unique fingerprint.
By turning your hands in different ways and adding recognizable details to the printed elements, you can realize any ideas. Thus, by connecting and combining simple elements, the baby develops imagination, spatial and imaginative thinking, and finds the first design solutions. With this method of drawing, you can use both hands alternately, or use them simultaneously, which perfectly develops coordination. T
Some simple creative exercises are especially important for left-handed children, as they unobtrusively stimulate the full development of the right hand. This, at first glance, not very neat and downright dirty work on large sheets of paper serves as an excellent means for relaxation and relaxation, liberates the child, relieves him of the fear of spoiling something or getting dirty, and gives the child the necessary creative courage, the lack of which little children often suffer from. artists.
Creativity with mom in the kitchen
Paper and paints are not at all necessary attributes for finger painting. Beautiful finger paintings can be created on a tray or baking sheet sprinkled with flour or semolina. A sufficient amount of flour or cereal must be leveled by shaking the tray so that the entire loose mass is distributed in an even, not thick layer. So your improvised sheet of blank paper is ready. You can use your finger to draw any objects or scenes that are not overloaded with details. Painted pictures can be easily erased by shaking the tray several times. A baby who is captivated by such an unusual drawing will free up a lot of time for his busy cooking mother.
“Artistic” cleaning
Another great place for finger painting is the bathroom. The little artist-experimenter can have tiled walls, a mirror, and the bathtub itself at his disposal. The choice of colors here is limited only by the assortment of the toilet shelf. You can draw on tiles, mirrors and bathtub walls with both children's toothpaste and dad's shaving cream. The main thing is that these “paints” do not contain fat - it is difficult to wash off.
You can draw by dipping your finger in paste or cream. Or - run a clean finger over a dense foam base, which is obtained if you cover some smooth surface with a thin layer of shaving foam. A shaving brush or sponge works well to apply the foam. The tile can be used as a basis for ornaments: let the child find a pattern and repeat his mother’s drawing on the adjacent tile.
Such hygienic paints will not only entertain the baby, but will also help clean the bathroom. You don’t need to scrub anything special, just wash off the drawings with a shower, and the bathroom will only become cleaner. If you want brightness here, you can use gouache or watercolor. These paints are water-soluble and can be completely washed off with plain water.
Instead of paints - plasticine
Drawing... with plasticine will further strengthen your fingers and prepare them for writing. You need to apply a simple design on the cardboard base, and then pinch off small pieces of plasticine and smear them over the design with your fingers, as if painting over it. The work turns out complete and very decorative if the entire surface of the picture is covered with such “paints” - both the drawing and the background.
Plasticine pieces mix well with each other and new, unexpected colors are obtained. From a distance, this work looks like it was painted in oil. Hands and fingers are a universal tool that is always with the child, and instead of paper and canvas, the whole world is at his disposal.
Is it possible to resist drawing with a tanned finger on the warm sand at the edge of the sea, so that the waves, like a huge eraser, wash away the drawing?
How can you help but draw a funny face on the foggy glass or run your finger along the dusty side of the car?
How can one avoid oddly picking at the ice on a frozen trolleybus window, if sometimes even adults can’t resist doing it?
By allowing a child to feel and try everything for himself, to put everything through his own hands, we expand the boundaries of his knowledge and creative horizons. After all, a dirty finger can easily be washed off with soap or a damp cloth, and the desire to create, suppressed in early childhood, may never wake up.
Paint Recipes
The technology called “Finger Painting” involves the use of paints. But many parents worry that they may be dangerous for the child. After all, many kids taste them, and they contain many harmful chemicals.
Some mothers prepare their own paints. The ingredients are quite simple:
- 2 tbsp. flour;
- 1.5 tbsp. water;
- 7 tbsp. l. salt;
- 1.5 tbsp. l. vegetable oil;
- glycerol;
- food colorings.
First you need to mix the dry products - flour and salt. Add water to them and stir until thick sour cream forms. Then add vegetable oil. The ingredients can be mixed with a whisk, fork, mixer or blender. Glycerin is added as desired, it gives the paint shine.
The finished mass is poured into different jars; you can use empty containers from gouache or baby puree. Then you need to add dyes. They can be natural - juice of carrots, beets, celery, turmeric. You can also use food colorings that are added to baked goods.
At home, you can prepare three-dimensional paints for finger painting. You will need few ingredients:
- 1 tbsp. flour;
- 1 tbsp. salt;
- 2 tbsp. water.
The products must be thoroughly mixed and placed in different containers. Then dyes are added to them. For additional shine, glitter or glycerin is added to the mixture. Next, the jars are placed in the microwave for 1.5 minutes at 180 degrees. The result will be a voluminous material. While drawing, the paints will lie on the paper so that any image will acquire a 3D effect.
You can also use porridge for cooking:
- 0.5 tbsp. fine-grained cereals;
- water;
- dyes.
Semolina is suitable for creating paints; it is quite small. It is cooked according to the usual recipe; the consistency of the porridge should resemble sour cream. For greater viscosity, you can add PVA glue to the mixture. The mass is also laid out in small jars and mixed with dyes. This material will also allow you to create three-dimensional drawings. But after applying it to paper, you need to handle the painting more carefully - it must dry. You can fix the cereal with regular hairspray.
Ideas for finger paintings
Finger painting is the most accessible form of creativity for babies starting from six months. At about the age of two or three years, the child will ask the parents to draw something. Then you can use a little trick. Ask your child to make paint impressions with their fingers. And then turn them into different drawings: images of animals, flowers, transport. Older children will also enjoy this method of finger painting. Any preschooler will love the idea of turning their prints into funny drawings. This is an opportunity to develop fine motor skills, imagination, creativity, and an idea to have fun.
