I think I hyped myself up too much.
First off, I couldn't find the "Paint with Water" books in any of the stores in town, so I had to resort to Amazon. I love Amazon, I do, but next time, tell me that there are only 20 pages in a book that I am about to pay $6.50 for, will ya? I was expecting these HUGE paint with water coloring books, and instead got these two measly 20 page a piece coloring books...at a combined cost of about $13.
It's okay, I thought to myself....I am sure they have improved these since I was little and I bet the pages are awesome! The girls are going to love it! And I will have some art for my fridge! YAY!
There was psych up #2.
The pages did appear cooler (brighter, more vivid colors, fun designs, etc.), but I let the girls "paint" pictures out of the little people book today and I was not impressed. Honestly, neither were the girls. The paper is thin, so when it gets wet, it tears easily. Livvy ripped her paper within a couple minutes of starting the activity, then was handing me pieces of dripping wet colored paper for the next several minutes. Ugh.
We haven't tried the Lisa Frank book yet (in all fairness, it got awesome reviews by comparison), but the girls just weren't digging this painting activity. I think they will do well with this eventually, they just aren't there yet. And I thought I would get more for the cost of the coloring books...so that was kind of a bummer too.
Here's an overview of the activity so you can give it a try with your little ones though! We are definitely going to try it again...maybe in a month or two...
Total prep time for activity: 30 seconds (tape picture to tray and get water and paintbrush)
Total time spent doing activity: 5 minutes...bummer...
Clean up time: 30 seconds (Good! I'm glad there wasn't much clean up since it wasn't an activity that they loved!).
One of the reasons I chose to hunt down the paint by water books was because of the "no mess" feature. The other was the ease of use...I figured that the girls would be able to complete the activity with little effort. I didn't count on the pages getting wet and ripping. In brainstorming after the fact, perhaps it would behoove us to tape the paint with water sheets to a piece of construction paper, then tape the construction paper to the trays. Perhaps that would work!
Have you done this activity with your kids? Do they like it? Love it? Hate it?
Can you think of any other ways to improve this activity? I really think the girls will enjoy it, I think that maybe I just jumped the gun a bit and they may be a bit too young yet =).
As always, your thoughts and suggestions are welcome!
Until next time-
Megan
