Children love painting at the best of times. It is such an amazing creative outlet that seems to bring their imaginations alive and I have a wonderful collection of my children’s paintings that I will treasure forever (full disclosure, there are a lot I have binned in the process too).
Not wanting to go with the usual painting routine this, very rainy, afternoon, I decided to bring in another element: potatoes. Now, I know that potatoes aren’t the most conventional tools for painting but they make for a fun sensory experience and the process of smearing on the paint and stamping it on the paper is wonderful for fine motor skills too.
This is a really easy craft to do with your little ones, all you need is:
• Potatoes (however many you like; you can get two stamps from each potato)
• Playdough or cookie cutters
• A sharp knife
• Paint and paper
• A drop sheet or newspaper to protect your floor
When I explained to my girls what we were doing they had all sorts of ideas about what shapes they wanted cut out of their potatoes. I am not going to lie, I was terrified! Cutting a straight chip out of a potato was difficult enough, let alone a heart, butterfly or flower. And let’s not beat around the bush, most of our chips come ready cut in a bag anyway.
I then had the genius idea (even if I do say so myself) of using the girl’s playdough cutters to press into the potatoes and then simply cut the excess away. This would leave a perfect shape with minimal effort, everybody was a winner.
I started off cutting each potato in half and then each half became a stamp with one shape cut out. Once all of our shapes had been cut out the girls got to work applying their paint and stamping the shapes onto the paper.
There was a lot of stamping, smearing and mixing of colours. However along with all of that, there was also a lot of fun.
Once the novelty of stamping the potatoes wore off, the girls started smearing them on their sheets as well as using their fingers. It was a great big mess but in the end we had a wonderful collection of stamped and smeared paintings.