My daughter wanted to do some finger painting and we were fresh out of finger paint. So I whipped together this recipe that ‘slips’ just like finger paint does beneath the fingers.

Materials:
1 tsp of dish soap
2 tbs of tempera paint

Then I gave her a piece of finger paint paper (high gloss) and let her go. Well, it didn’t take long for her to fill that paper….and the next one….and the next one. AND I noticed that she was just enjoying the texture and the color mixing of the paint and not really painting any particular picture. So the next part of this art project was pretty creative.

I decided to get out one of our plastic serving trays and put the finger paints directly on the tray. She enjoyed swirling the colors together. Next she used her finger to ‘carve’ a design of a face out of the paint. It was a really good face and she wanted to save it….so we decided to make a print out of it. She got a regular piece of construction paper and carefully put it on top of the paint on the tray. She barely pushed on the paper because she didn’t want the paint to ‘smoosh’ beneath the paper and lose her design.

She carefully peeled up the paper and she saw her print. Her brother began talking to her about printing in the ‘old days’ and how her art was very similar to the ‘old style’ of printing. She continued to print another copy of the face. Then she got more finger paint on the tray and made a new drawing.

This project was such a great tactile experience but also a great lead-in to learning about the history of printing. We looked up pictures on the internet of old printing presses and found some books at the library. Check out the links below!

A link to the biography of Johannes Gutenberg: http://www.ducksters.com/biography/johannes_gutenberg.php

A link to the International Printing Museum in Carson,CA: http://www.printmuseum.org/