Your Baby & Toddler

Play with paint and learn

Occupation­al therapist Samantha Toweel-Moore helps you use paint to set the visual and tactile senses of your baby in motion, improve spatial concepts and work the finger and eye muscles to the beat of imaginatio­n

- YB

THE THOUGHT OF paint normally triggers two responses in parents – mess and kids having hours of colourful, creative fun. While it is essential to invest in an apron for your child and work on a plastic surface that is easy to wipe, painting is a must.

HERE’S WHY. IT DEVELOPS:

The visual and tactile senses Messy play educates the sense of touch, which underlies most of the activities your child does. When she dresses, her skin needs to learn to tolerate different textures. When she eats, she needs to be able to register that she has dirt around her mouth or that her fingers are dirty, and she needs to be able to tolerate this dirt for a period without severe discomfort. Touching the water, paint, paintbrush­es and sponges, your child encounters new textures to explore and tolerate. Mixing colours and learning about their names and shades educates the brain through the eyes.

Hand-eye coordinati­on As your child paints, she uses her eye muscles to guide her hand movements. Smooth eye movements are vital for good reading and writing.

Creativity Painting for young children should be kept as unstructur­ed and openended as possible. This allows your child to show you her view of the world. It frees

her thinking. It allows her to pose questions for herself, like what should I do next? What colour should I use? What will happen if I press hard with my brush? This kind of thinking leads to problem solving and develops decisionma­king skills.

Scientific concepts Painting requires your child to mix portions and colours. This helps introduce your child to scientific concepts; she will discover that when two different colour liquids mix, they make a new colour. She learns that the more water you add to the powder, the more the paint runs. She learns that when you wet paper, it can tear.

Spatial concepts As your child paints a surface, she learns about the space it offers. The high bits, the low bits, those to the side too. She will start to use spatial language to describe her picture to you. For example, “It’s a picture of mommy and me standing next to each other looking at the stars up high. There is grass under our feet.”

12 TO 24 MONTHS

Hand-print occasion cards

Your child is now at the age where she starts to say her first words. She has had her first birthday and is beginning to understand a “sense of occasion”. A personalis­ed card for those special people in her life is the perfect gift.

You will need:

3 non-toxic water paints

A cup of water

Watercolou­r paper or heavy stock card

A marker pen

A damp washcloth

Place a tablespoon of each colour of water paint on a plate. Add a few drops of water if necessary. Ask your child to put the palm of her hand on the paint and swivel it to mix the colours. Press her hand onto the card, leaving a border to fit your message (like “Happy birthday”).

Once the paint dries, write the message on the card.

Tip: Cut the card into interestin­g shapes. You will need to do one or two practice runs on some scrap paper. Use a damp cloth to remove any excess paint, as this reduces the visibility of the creases.

24 TO 36+ MONTHS

Paint galore

Learning how to use a variety of tools to paint works the small muscles of the hands. It is a precursor to being able to hold writing instrument­s properly (not too tight and not too loose). Try these activities:

✓ Use sponges, string, twigs, feathers and fingers to dip in the paint and move across the art surface to create a variety of textures and marks on the canvas.

✓ Fill dishwashin­g-liquid bottles with liquid paint and squeeze and spray it across the paper.

✓ Mix powder paint with bubble liquid. (A mixture of dishwashin­g liquid and water works well.) Place a straw in the mix, and let your child blow bubbles. Lay paper across the top of the bowl – careful not to press too hard. You want to catch the bubbles and let them dry and pop so the pattern is left on the paper. This makes fabulous giftwrap. Tip: Let your child paint the paved and concrete world around her with a paintbrush and a bowl of water.

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