First Fingerpainting

I try to incorporate painting... especially fingerpaiting...early in the year. Some children (especially those who didn't go to preschool) have never actually had a chance to slime their fingers around in paint!!

For this project, I just had pieces of fingerpaint paper (you can use regular paper if it's all you have, but fingerpaint paper is better because it's slick!) cut into pieces about 6 x 8 inches for each child. I also put a 9 x 12 piece of scratch paper underneath to try to reduce the mess on the tables. The students get to choose 2 colors of paint from the apple spectrum (like yellow and red or green and yellow). I give a big blob of the first color they say, then a little dot of the second color they say right onto the paper. Their job is to cover the entire page.

When the pages are dry I just freehand cut the apples about 3-4 at a time into an apple shape. If you don't want to freehand cut, you could use a template to make them all perfect. I like them to be a little imperfect. I call it whimsical. :-)

I add a stem, write the student's name with a really fat tipped black marker and staple them up on the tree.

My favorite is Joaquin's. You can see his handprint right on it.