A Fun Weekend Family Activity

Keeping with the Jungle Theme at Kids Joy, here’s a little something you can do with the kids over the weekend.

We did it a couple of days ago and our kids had a blast. We took our kids down in the garden for this activity and told them it was a family activity. Our four year old was most excited! He loves when we are all together doing something. Over these past months, that’s one thing we’ve learnt and been trying to do intentionally. With our kids being 4 and 2 – at the toddler stage of life, where physically its so demanding looking after them, it was either my husband or me on ‘child duty’. We kept a high value on marriage, so we would put the kids to bed by 7 and have the rest of the evening to spend together. But we never realized that we were missing out on spending time together as a whole family. One afternoon when we both happened to be together, a remark by our four year old, shook us up! He very innocently said, ‘Wow, Daddy and Mummy are both with us!’ That made us rework our lives and schedule in family times in a very intentional way.

So back to the simple art activity! All we used is paper, paint, brushes, and a sponge. It would help a lot if you kept everything ready before you called the kids. (I didn’t do that and had to keep running up to get things I had forgotten!)

Once we started, we just decided to have fun. We started by painting our 2 year old’s hand. She loves her hand full of paint. The problem though is that once she sees paint on her hand, she cant contain it to one handprint, but wants to keep pressing it on different parts of the paper! We had a couple of calamities and had to change the side of the paper, but we finally managed to get a nice handprint of her’s! (If you look carefully you’ll see another print on top, that we managed to cover up with sky!) I then gave her a paper and some paint to do her own thing, while my husband painted my son’s hand. He was really into the activity!

After we did our own handprints, my son helped with drawing some grass with green paint. With not too much paint on the brush, upward stokes give it a nice grassy effect. We then dipped a sponge in blue paint and our kids sponge printed the sky. My daughter really enjoyed doing this!

After that the kids and my husband had had enough of art and went to play on the swing while I did the final touches.

This artwork is now put up in our bedroom as a reminder of the fun family evening we had together and will always be a little memory of their toddler days!

DIsclaimer: If your picture doesn’t look frame worthy, don’t worry! The activity is all about having fun. The memory of doing it all together as a family is something that you’ll can cherish forever!

Things you need:

  1. A strip of White Chart or Card Paper (About 1x3 feet)
  2. Grey, Blue and Green Paint (Poster or WaterColours)
  3. 3 plates to mix the paints
  4. A couple of brushes
  5. A sponge (I used my kitchen sponge scrub!)
  6. A bowl of Water
  7. A towel to wipe your hands
  8. Extra paper for the kids to paint while they are waiting for their turn
  9. A black marker to outline

 

Method:

  1. Paint each family members hand with grey paint one at a time and let them press it onto the paper.
  2. Use green paint to paint grass at the bottom with a brush
  3. Dip a sponge in blue paint and press it on the top to get a sky effect
  4. Once the paint is dry, outline the elephants with black marker. You can also write your family name on top and the individual family members names too if you wish. At the bottom, write the date, so you have a record of how tiny your kids hands were at this stage of life!
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