This simple art activity is so much fun for babies who are sitting or standing and younger toddlers.
As I share in my new book, Time to Create, the process of doing in art activities is so much more important for young children than the end result, and this activity provided AJ (at twelve months of age) with lots of opportunity to ‘do.’
Toddler Art Activities: Non-Messy Sticky Art
I prepared a small basket with some flattened patty pans/cupcake wrappers, cut into halves and quarters.
I lifted the corners of the backing sheet of a piece of clear, self adhesive book covering and taped it to the window (sticky side out so it didn’t stick to the window), removing the backing sheet once we were ready to start.
I showed AJ that the surface was sticky and how to push the patty pan to the book covering so that it would stick.
She had a wonderful time pressing the patty pans onto the surface and as soon as she saw that we had a bit of a collection going she started pulling them off again.
And pushing them on and pulling them off and pushing them on and pulling them off. You can see lots of little finger prints on the sticky surface as testimony to this.
At one stage our sticky art looked like the photo above but it wasn’t for long. I left it hanging in the playroom, together with the basket and a few leftover patty pans and AJ came back to it many times in the days that followed, to push on or pull off more of the wrappers until all I was left with was a blank sheet of sticky book covering decorated with fingerprints.
The wonderful thing about process art is that it doesn’t matter, as it was the process that was most important and we sure had a lot of fun with the doing!
Have you tried sticky art with your little person?
Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
It’s sad that so many people don’t get this process thing for little ones. When my oldest was in her first nursery program I took her for her orientation. There were tables set up with various things for the kids to do. A new young assistant was walking around talking to the kids. One child had sat down at the collage table, taken one piece of paper and stuck it with some paste to her paper and she was done. The new teacher, who was a natural picked up the paper, turned it over and said to the child “Oh look, it sticks”. She was naturally aware of what kids were learning at that stage, that glue sticks things to paper.
Love this. Such a simply yet effective idea.