Two year olds can be fickle about the kinds of art experiences they will try and my grandson is no exception.
But there is one thing that I have found that does interest him and that is squeezing a plastic bottle. The bottle can be filled with glue or water or anything that is squeezable so this time, I set out my squeezable paint bottles for him to explore…
Setting up your invitation to play
The paint in these bottles was left over from preschool and needed used up and cleaned out so I could put fresh new paint in the bottles before preschool starts back up this fall. So instead of dumping it all out, I set up an invitation to paint for my grandson out on the driveway…
When my grandson woke up from nap, we put a big shirt on over his clothes and headed outside. It took about two seconds for him to see the paint and head over to check it out…
He has used a squeeze bottle on many occasions so no need for any guidance or modeling the process. Instead, I just observed him make decisions and put them into action…
Making observations
Within a few minutes, he began squeezing paint onto the paper but his grip wasn’t quite right to get the paint to flow well. He was getting drips of paint to come out but he kept changing up his grip on the paint bottles until he found a grip that worked best for him…
Each time he chose a new paint bottle, he would adjust his grip on the bottle to get into a comfortable position and then squeeze away. There was no rhyme or reason to where he squeezed paint. This process was all about just squeezing and watching the paint flow to the ground…
After awhile, most of the paint was gone from the containers and the streams of paint started to turn into bursts of air with paint mixed in which my grandson loved even more. He loved the sound and the splattering effect the paint had as he squeezed hard to spurt out the last bits of paint left in the bottle…
Opening up other avenues of exploration
Soon, the paper had streams and spurts of paint all around so I now invited my grandson to try walking through the paint…
Or rubbing it with his hands. My grandson wasn’t too sure about either of these ideas but he gave it a few tries and then wanted me to help him wash the paint off his hands and feet…
My grandson eventually decided to drive a car through the paint and I pulled out a rake and we took turns making lines through the paint. I liked raking the paint more than he did. We spent the late afternoon exploring the world of art together through a very open ended painting process and in the end, I saved the large painted mural to use again. I’m not sure what we will use it for but something will come to me in the near future…
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