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Fingerpainting in the wind

The last few days have been abnormally chilly around here. And occasionally, there has been rain. So, park trips have been on hold recently. As the Webmaster had a face-to-face interview yesterday morning (!) and was out of the house, I set the kids up outside to fingerpaint.

Painting on the porch bench

I grabbed a couple of the Webmaster’s old T-shirts and used them as painting smocks. Which was a good thing, too, because Tad was more interested in painting his shirt than his paper. Still, he did make an artistic effort.

Tad paints

I also had a basin of soapy water on the bench, along with a towel. Tad found this more fun than the painting. He was thrilled with all the mess he was able to make. Oh, and just to note – I put the fingerpaint in leftover Lunchable containers. The plastic is non-recyclable, so I give it one more use before tossing it away. It’s a trick I learned from Grandma.

Tad excited about his work

Did I mention that Tad really enjoyed all of this?

Ane painting

Ane enjoyed it, too. I spread out plenty of scratch paper to keep the bench from getting painted – though the paint is Crayola Washable Fingerpaint – and I finally opened up the package of Melissa & Doug Finger Paint Paper (it’s large, glossy, and takes the paint well) that I have been saving for just such an occasion. Ane comes from the painting school of Leave No Space Blank – and she worked very hard on filling her paper with impressionistic streaks, which took most of the day to dry.

Our biggest problem today was the wind – I finally had to weight everything down with the fingerpaint bottles so that it would stay in place, because the wind kept picking up the scratch paper and blowing it off the bench. I think we’ll do this again on a slightly nicer day.

Still, a good time and a clean mess was had by all.

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