Finger-Painting

Emilia has always been sensory-avoidant to certain textures, like play dough or shaving cream, on her hands.  That's why I was not at all sure how her first experience with finger-paint would go over this morning.  Nonetheless, I ventured forth and set the kitchen timer for 15 minutes because this was our first structured learning activity for the day.

When we started, Emilia was quite uncomfortable with the finger-paint concept.  She cried and was reluctant to even allow me to guide her hands into the paint and to draw.  She clearly did not want to touch the paint.  But we continued and she started to ease up.

Here we are about ten minutes in and Emilia is beginning to work independently.  Do you see her tongue?  That's what she does when she has to focus/force herself to do something.

And suddenly her interest was truly peaked.

And she started to have fun and enjoy herself (mostly in the same spot of thick paint).

Our buzzer went off at 15 minutes and we carried on.  Here's one happy girl after about half an hour of finger-painting.

This was our final creation.  I ended up cutting out Emilia's hand prints and tossing the rest because some of the paper had gotten stuck to the kitchen table and was ripping apart.

I don't know what Emilia would say, but I, for one, can't wait to do this again.

*For anyone interested, we used Crayola Finger Paint and it washed off our hands and nails very easily and completely.  I cleaned Emilia's face and chest with a baby wipe and again, everything came off without any problems.  The same goes for the paint that got on the table.