If you’ve visited Big Kid Little Kid before then you probably stumbled onto some of my nerdtacular dad-craft which gave Little E, my pre-schooler, hours of fun and, hopefully, a smidge of learning. But in the past months, since the birth of my rockin’ baby son Little L, the dad-craft has been on hiatus. So autumn is the perfect season to get the little fella outside, avoiding the summer scorchers, and give him his first taste of some dad-tastic crafty fun.
Little L’s lack of motor skills had me stumped whilst trying to work out what craftiness to get him to do and then I googled onto a cool idea – painting with balls in a box. But this concept needed to be Dadded-Up!
This is very easy and lots of fun for your mini-person without requiring them to have any coordination whatsoever!
You’ll need:
- paper
- scissors
- sticky tape
- preferably non-toxic paint in a few colours
- container with a lockable lid
- toy cars
What to do:
- Ensure that the container you choose has a lockable lid, otherwise this activity will get out of hand and very messy!
- Cut a piece of paper to the size of your container and sticky tape it to the inside bottom.
- Squeeze some dollops of paint onto the paper. Choose some bright colours that will make interesting blends. I’m using water-based acrylic paints, as I already plan to hang the resulting masterpiece, but it may be safer to use non-toxic paints if you have chosen a food container for this craft.
- Add the toy cars to the container and lock the lid in place.
- Hand the box over to your baby and watch them knock, kick, wobble, wave and bam-bam the art into it!
- Take out the paper and BOOM! Instant artwork.
