Painting Indoors with the Tuff Spot

Poppet has been poorly and requested to do some painting, so we got out the Tuff Spot and laid out her painting bits and bobs along with some clean sheets of paper. There were various brushes and roller type things along with foam stamps (which never look like they are supposed to incidentally), straws, cotton buds, a toilet roll holder, a yoghurt carton and a helicopter (there was paint with various toy cars at her toddler club the other week and she loved making patterns with the wheels).

She started with a bit of loo roll printing and we talked about the circles that it made.....

She was more keen to get a bit mucky this time and started painting her hand with a cotton wool bud. I am glad that she is starting to embrace messy play even though she is a bit of a clean freak at heart. The benefits of messy play are that it introduces the toddler to new sensations and textures, develops their imagination and creativity, helps them discover patterns, and teaches the child that there is a time for mess (and that time is not when you are 15 and I have told you to put your washing away!).

She enjoys when I draw around her hand so this time I used a small brush to paint around her hand, she loved this, keeping very still and drooling in concentration a lot! I guess it must feel quite tickly and nice. She also really liked painting using the helicopter wheels. I really need to pick up some more wheeled vehicle toys as she really enjoys painting like this.

She tried to blow the paint using the straws (I was very clear to her that you can't suck, only blow), but it was too thick..... one day I'll do this with watered down paints as it makes interesting paintings.

She had a great morning and forgot she was ill at all!

Of her own accord she tried out some hand print painting again, no encouragement needed from me this time! She really enjoyed squishing her hands about in the paint and kept her hands there for ages, and did a few really clear hand prints on the paper ( once I told her she needed to do it quickly, down then up).

She did get pretty much covered in paint, but jammies were put straight into the wash and she had a quick 2 minute wash-down in the bath and she was right as rain. The tuff-spot contained the paint really well aside from a couple of little splatters on the floor. It really made painting much easier for us.