This activity provides a fun and sensory way for children to get creative whilst personalising something for themselves or as a gift.
This would be great for making personalised canvas art, pictures for framing or as we used it, to make gift cards.
Ages: 2-6+
Materials: Paper (or cardboard/canvas), stickers, inkpads
We used the foam stickers as they are good for little hands
Our little inkpads are not technically "child fingerpaints". These were purchased from Kmart and are intended for use with scrapbooking and stamps.
I am always present and only use these with children that won't put their fingers in their mouth.
The ink washes off fine afterwards.
Stick stickers in any design. Here is a name card we did
Let your child put fingerprints all over the card, ensuring that all around the stickers is covered
Carefully peel off the stickers and your design is done.
Let your child get creative with their own designs and patterns
Little stickers are fabulous for children developing their pincer grip and fine motor skills
3 different designs
Wonderful rainbow of fingerprints
We decided to leave the stickers on a couple of the designs as we thought they looked really cool
Handy Tips:
- Simplify this for younger children by assisting them with peeling the backs of stickers. Allow your young child to stick and arrange stickers as they like and then encourage them with the fingerprinting around/over the stickers
- Extend this by providing number and letter stickers and using for learning spelling, sight words, making number posters and more
- Mix it up by using paints instead of inkpads. You will find the colours blend more with paints
- Depending on the type of material you use as the base of your creation, you may find the stickers difficult to get off without ripping the paper. So as to avoid disappointment, test sticking some stickers and peeling them off your surface first. Note: the harder your child presses the stickers down while fingerprinting over them, the harder it may be to remove the stickers cleanly. Using canvas should alleviate this problem completely or just be careful removing the stickers from paper.
- Use this time to talk about the different colours being used or the letters/numbers, stickers, patterns etc.
- Practice new words such as "overlapping" to assist your child's understanding and language development.
- Remember that sometimes children just create, they don't need it to be a specific item at the end. It could just be an abstract creation. Allow this and don't push them to think they must make something "real."
Happy playing and creating,
Debs :)
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