Shapes Resist Painting

Vito is 29 months old.

Here’s another interesting way you can get your kids to learn about shapes. I was telling Vito we’ll do magic, and look for shapes in the black paper.  He was fascinated of what he will discover after covering the cardstock with paint!

Materials needed:

• contact paper
• black cardstock
• blow paints or spray (optional and would work on white cardstock)
• tempera paints
• roller brush

I cut out shapes from a piece of contact paperand taped them on a black cardstock.  I prepared  bright colour tempera paints(yellow, orange and blue) and roller brushes for Vito to use.  I asked him to paint all over the black cardstock which he happily did. He dabs and he rolls the brushes in the cardstock.  We dried out the paints and when they’re ready, I told him that there are shapes hidden in the paint and we are about discover them!

I peeled off the contact paper one at a time and he would name the shape each time he recognized them.   Of all the shapes, he can’t name the semi-circle yet, which is okay.  I will take this as a signal that I need to expose him more to non-conventional shapes so he’ll get used to them and their names.

Now, we tried doing this using blow paints but it didn’t work on a black cardstock.  The spray effect of the blow paints was not visible so I decided that we should “shelve” that idea as of the moment. I hope to try blow painting during summer so we could do it outdoor and work on it in a white cardstock. We’ll see about that.