Finger Painting

I decided to give finger painting a try this past week. LB had done a little bit of finger painting at OT but it was more mixing color with shaving cream. I brought a big sheet of paper outside and then put four colors in four different bowls. I showed LB that he could put it on his fingers and then put it on the paper. Then I stepped back and just let him experiment. What happened is that he was much more interested in painting himself than painting on the paper. He got a lot of pleasure out of putting the paint on his knees and then crawling across the paper. Admittedly, I was cringing a bit at how messy it was but I kept telling myself, "It will wash off. It will wash off. This is good for him. This is good for him." That should be my mantra. The painting didn't hold his attention for a really long time but I think he had fun and it was a good first experience. I am really trying to focus on the experience aspect of it and not the duration part of it. I've also noticed that as we do certain activities over and over he tends to get a little bit more creative and into it each time. He is like that now with shaving cream. The first couple of times he played with it he would want to stop after 15 minutes or so. But the last time we did shaving cream we had friends over and I basically had to call it quits after 30 minutes because LB's buddy was ready to be done. LB was covered head to toe and if I had let him he would have made the table a shaving cream slide and probably would have continued to play for a while.

The sun was really bright that day but I tried to capture LB's first finger painting creation.

When he seemed completely done I brought out his water table and the hose and as he played the paint came off pretty quickly. The bummer part about the messy activities is LB now enjoys the act of getting messy but is often put off by the fact that he has to clean up. He is sometimes like that in the bath as well. He likes playing in the bath but gets irritated when I try to actually apply a little soap and get him clean. And, oh my, do not even think about going near his ears unless you are prepared to hear some screaming. Thankfully, this time he was playing with the water table and hose so there wasn't much opportunity for him to object. We'll definitely be doing this again.