Plate-asaurus!

Our first try with finger painting wasn't too successful but mummy isn't giving up. This week, we did painting together one more time and it was such a great session!

The last session told me some things about my son and I made some changes:
1) He really doesn't like the idea of 'dirtying' his hand or fingers with paint or anything and will look so uncomfortable when he has stuff on his hand. My easy solution? I gave him a paintbrush this time round and he was a happy boy immediately!

2) He definitely like to paint more freely instead of having his hand held by me. I showed him how to dip the brush into the paint and paint on the paper plate. And when he got the idea, this impatient boy grabbed the paintbrush and started splattering paint all over the paper plate. Giving Xue full control of the paint and brush wasn't as disastrous as I thought it will be. Most of the paint went onto the paper plate and the newspaper beneath. Well, partly because I moved the plate around to 'catch' his brush whenever he swung it out of the designated painting area. Haha it's a good strategy really to minimize mess. I do remind him to stay within the newspaper but a 15 months old kid just doesn't have good control of his hands yet. Another strategy, I cleaned up the spillover immediately with baby wipes. It's easier to clean the paint off his hands or floor while the paint is still wet.

*Edit: Mummy Fiona just shared with me about Crayola Washable Kid's Paint that can be washed off easily and don't need to mix with water too! Hehe anymore tips to minimise mess during painting sessions are welcome!

I think it's a great idea to help the kid form connections with what he is familiar with first. So, before the session, I showed him the dinosaurs in his books, particularly Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus as they are the ones we will be making. Interestingly, he can now point out all the Stegosaurus in his storybooks, but not the Apatosaurus. He can only recognise the paper plate one as Apatosaurus for now.

I used regular poster colours here and diluted them with just a teeny weeny bit of water as I don't want any dripping wet paint. Once the paint is dry, I cut the plate into two and used them to make the body for two dinosaurs. I attached the head, legs, tail and eye (which I cut out from another clean plate). The stegosaurus gets some cool spikes on his back while the apatosaurus has a long neck.

And talking about the long neck dinosaur, I learnt a new fact today! I always knew them as Brontosaurus but did you know this name is redundant now? Hehe I didn't know this! Apparently, the dude who discovered a long neck and thought it was different from the Apatosaurus and named it Brontosaurus. But they are actually the same kind of dinosaurs!

Our plate-asauruses are ready and now up hanging in our bedroom. It's dinosaur theme this week at home and I will be back to update more dino-fun activities!