Rainbow Finger Paint Trees

Today we made Rainbow Finger-Paint Trees, inspired by a favourite book of Freddie’s, and now Sasha’s, called ‘I am a Zebra’, about a zebra who lives in a “forest of beautiful rainbow trees”.

This was a great bit of respite this morning, as we were indoors due to the rubbish weather AGAIN (hello, long British winter!) and it was something that both Freddie and Sasha could have a go at, kept them from killing each other apart, for oh, 20 minutes at least.

And also, I KNEW there was a reason why I was holding on to all those toilet rolls…

This craft was great for colour recognition, and Freddie enjoyed telling me what colour paint he was dipping his fingers into, and I encouraged Sasha to do the same. I was really chuffed, as she surprises me by now consistently recognising a few colours (blue, yellow and orange and PURPLE, don’t forget PURPLE!).

Freddie and I also talked about what happened when he mixed the colours together, and how he made ‘brown’ by doing this. He’s still quite young to fully understand the concept of mixing colours, but I thought this was quite a good introduction anyway.

On another tree he made, he also enjoyed making panterns within some purple paint with his fingers, and seemed quite focused on creating swirls for quite a long time (see photos).

With the trees that were saturated with paint (tends to happen with young toddlers like Sasha!), I pressed some kitchen roll on top to speed up the drying process, and doing this ended up creating a really lovely effect with the tree.

As you can see from the pictures, we ended up with some great trees, and some of these have now been ‘planted’ in our Happyland town!

You will need:

• Toilet/kitchen rolls (as many as you want, depending on how many trees you want to make)
• White, A4 card
• Green marker pen
• Finger Paints- we used these ones by Galt
• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Draw a ‘cloud’ shape in green marker pen on your A4 piece of card. This will be the bushy body of your tree.
2. Open up the finger paints so your toddler has free rein of them (really advise covering your little one up, even though the finger paints are washable, they don’t half get everywhere!). Then let them go crazy and decorate the tree as they wish.
3. Once the ‘trees’ are finished and dry (this shouldn’t take long at all with these paints), you need to cut around the outline with scissors, then cut 2 slits about an inch long, parallel to each other at one end of the loo roll.
4. You then slot your colourful bushy tree into the slits, and ta-dah! You have a magical rainbow tree!

Becky

Meet the award-nominated UK lifestyle blogger behind Spirited Puddle Jumper – a mum of three living in South East London! Becky shares the real ups and downs of family life, parenting tips, and lifestyle inspiration, proving that being a mum doesn’t mean you stop being fun or having other interests! Follow along for honest insights into UK family life and opinions on a whole range of topics, from travel and food, to beauty reviews, home and DIY, business and health and wellness.