Toddler-friendly monoprints

I'm always on the lookout for art projects to do with Anouk, but our options at her age seem to be fairly limited. Cutting and pasting are too complicated for her little hands. Anything involving clay or other play-dough type substances is out, as she hasn't fully passed out of the stage of putting everything in her mouth. But she is at the point developmentally that she sometimes needs something more than a handful of crayons to hold her attention. So today we tried making monoprints, and it turned out to be a surprisingly toddler-friendly craft.

The gist of the project (which I first read about at No Monsters in My Bed) is this: You roll a thin layer of paint onto a cookie sheet or other nonporous surface (we used a paint roller and the Crayola washable fingerpaints -- "washable" turned out to be the key word here). Older kids can use a Q-tip to draw on the painted surface; we used our fingers and hands. When you've got your design just how you want it, you press a piece of paper gently over the paint, pull it away, and voila: you have a print.

 Baby A. was a little freaked out by the sensation of paint on her hands, and after a few tears, we looked for other objects to use to make designs.


Verdict: I can't think of an art project that's more likely to appeal to a bunch of different age groups from infant to adult (while Anne worked on her masterpiece, I played around with ideas for holiday cards and thank you notes). In spite of one moderately annoying cleanup job (I've seen worse), I'm calling Operation Monoprint a keeper.