Toddlers and toddler art can get very messy as you are well aware if you involved with toddlers.

I wrote a simple toddler crafts introductory post recently explaining what toddlers are really capable of.

I really wanted to share with you a lovely website called the Artful Parent by woman named Jean who was running toddler art groups and posting about her results along with many images.

This particular post is about their last day in the art group which is really too bad that it’s the last day, but the images and the activities that are run in this art group are just so perfect for toddlers that if you work with toddlers or children a bit older, you must go check it out.

She has so many wonderful messy and sensory activities that she provides for her young charges without any concentration on just the end product itself.

A true process only environment. I would check out alot of her old posts also.

In another  post I found they did one of my favorite activities, collaging but they collaged with contact paper and used no glue. A different twist

I only hope that these children don’t end up squashed later in their schooling environments by over zealous teachers who want them to “make” something.

Or if they do “make something” maybe they’ll learn about educational arts and crafts and do it that way.

On the artful parent blog I found another link in the comments section from another blogger writing about getting creative with toddlers.

If you are looking for real arts and crafts, copycat crafts for toddlers then you are looking for trouble.

Copycat crafts are not good for anyone but for toddlers, they really won’t know what the heck is going on.

Let them just mess, and experiment and have a ball.

There is another post I did based  on the artful parent where I depict 7 activities that toddlers love.

As you see I think she has great stuff in that blog for toddlers.

Preschool activities have always had some sort of clay or play dough included in their curriculum and for good reason. Clay is a wonderful activity for all early childhood age children and older.

What many early childhood educators don’t know, however, are the options available in the molding and sculpting arena. Many Moms and kindergarten teachers just resort to the old play dough scheme.

Play-dough, however, is is passe. Aside from the fact that so many Moms can’t stand it as it gets old, the it gets piecey and gets in their kids hair and in the carpets and in the food.

So for those of you who want children to do sculpting and modeling in the best way possible there are other choices besides play dough.

Here are your options:

The first image above is white clay and the image below is gray clay.

The truth is up until recently I always called this type of clay “gray clay”.

It wasn’t until we ordered some of this type of clay and it came in white that I realized it really the same type of clay only in different color. I think it also comes in red.

The white clay actually came in 4 chunks and was easier to distribute.

The gray clay more often comes in a large chunk as seen below and needs to be cut with a piece of string or wire as shown below. I actually wrote a post a while back  play dough is not as great as gray clay that gives  step by step instructions in using this clay.

So the real name of this clay is hardening clay I guess. I know Marblex sells it and it comes in 5 pounds and 25 pound packages.

This is NOT the kind of clay that you put into an oven to bake.

It gets used, either stored to use again one day or left out to dry.

The cool thing about this kind of clay though is that it’s always reconstitutable.

Even if it’s all hardened, it can be reconstituted by smashing it down (through a plastic) with a hammer and letting it soak for a few days in water.

The clay comes packaged in plastic and as I said if it needs to be cut, you do that with yarn or string.

This type of clay is the real thing. It’s like the professional stuff with the other kinds of clay being the ones pretending to be real.

Anyone with any real interest in sculpting would only use this type of clay.

Gray or white clay for that matter gives the children opportunities to do stuff with it that cannot be done with other kind of clay.

Aside from the pounding and pinching and rolling and all the things they can do to the clay, its an EXCELLENT form of art therapy. It is a very sensory material and the children do get dirty with it. (which is great for young children)

A child is angry or frustrated, or wants to pull out his sisters hair, let him or her at that clay.

The clay listens to your hands. It stands when you tell it to (as long as you make it thick enough) and you can make so many things with it if you are finished experimenting with it.

I have another post that describe the best way to store your clay.

The other two types of clay I want to talk about (clay is really the wrong word for them)is the play dough type and the plasticine type.

I am using play dough even though play dough is a brand to mean that specific type of clay or play dough that is colored and comes in small canisters and you can buy them anywhere.

They are definitely great for rainy days,  does not get the tables and children as dirty as the gray clay does, even though as I said it does get piecy and in kids hair. But this play dough is just not as satirizing as good gray clay.

The children can pound it and cut it and pinch it but can’t do much else with it.

So as I said its a great filler, easy to buy and easy to clean until it gets old.

The third type of clay here  I want to discuss here is the plasticine type.

Its an oil based clay, is had to use until it gets soft so its not that great for art therapy use, or for very little children.

Lots of older children use this type to make dioramas for school projects. It comes in lots of colors and is actually very good for fine motor skill which is why they get used for dioramas. Young children will not want to wait till it softens in their hands and will not get the same experience using it as the gray clay.

The plasticine often come packaged the way the image shows below.

I know there are many more types of modeling materials out there but the truth is that when it comes down to it, most of them are derivatives of these 3 types.

So try them all just be aware of the different experiences each of them brings to the table.

Toddlers love art.

If you don’t believe me than come look at my neighbors walls.

You would think it was still cavemen time as her children have taken to decorating her walls as the cavemen used to do oh so many years ago.

The truth is though that toddlers are really just learning all about art and materials and how they work.

When my daughter was entering her first year of nursery school, I took her for orientation.

In the classroom there was a table set up with collage materials and paste.

I watched as one little girl under 3 years old, sat down at the table.

She picked up a piece of paper, smeared some paste on it and pasted it down.

She was done.

The assistant in the classroom, a young teacher who was a natural at intuitively understanding children walked over to the table and sat down next to this little girl.

She picked up the paper, turned it over and said to the little girl “look it sticks”

She knew exactly where this little girl was developmentally.

She was learning that paste sticks things to other things.

That’s what toddlers are all about.

They are learning about art materials and the properties of art materials and should not be saddled with trying to make  “projects”.

They are too young and the projects will have no meaning for them.

I remember a friend of mine recounting how her young son came home from school with a  project and said “Look Ma, what my teacher made for you”

They are not dumb just curious and interested in mushing and gluing and pasting and ripping and coloring and cutting.

So to begin I would suggest 3 basic activities for toddlers.

1. Coloring (on papers only)or the sidewalk with chalk
2. Cutting
3. Pasting

Very simple.

The first image is of some toddlers coloring.

Their activity will not last long and it’s best to give them large sheets of paper so that the can really move their arms and fingers when watching as the crayon meets the paper.

I’m not so sure I would give them markers, but you’ll have to play it by ear.

As they get older they will appreciate the diversity of markers more.

You can definitely start teaching them how to cut with children’s scissors and long strips of paper. Sit with them as you teach them to hold a scissor and let them cut up the long strip into tiny squares.

It may take a while until they fully grasp how to use the scissors.

and then when they are done cutting, they can use the squares and anything else they cut to paste onto another sheet of paper.

However, be aware that they are really not interested in what they are making, they are just learning about the glue and will often spend more time just putting the glue all over the place rather then pasting.

You can also give them pasting activities with shapes that you have prepared for them.

So those are the basic activities in art that I would give toddlers and if you give them these type of activities often, you will notice as they grow and mature how they are starting to think more and arrange their collages with more thought and eventually in a few years you will see representational art work from these toddlers no more.

Art and creativity is not the same for children as it is for adults.

Art for adults can have many meanings. Museums, starving artist in attics , lithographs, a cultural elite, etc.

Adults have come to expect certain things from art and art is usually centered around areas of external beauty and aesthetics.

Art for children is something very different, however and it is usually a means of expression.

As children grow their art grows and not necessarily along with what the adults thinks art is.

One of the problems with adults who are involved in children’s art is that they don’t have the patience to wait for the children to grow up to attempt to create some sort of representational art.

Never mind that museums are full of modern art pieces that most of us don’t understand unless the meaning are explained to us, but for some reason young children are expected to “make something” in art.

Classic preschool, kindergarten and after school programs for young children are comprised of crafts activities that often look like the image above.

A teacher created flower that the children are supposed to copy exactly as it is presented to them by the teacher.

A number of yeas ago a very famous songwriter named Harry Chapin wrote a song called flowers are red where he sings about a little boy that had to create red flowers and green leaves because that is what the teacher said it had to be.

That song always touched me very much as I was totally able to relate to that song, from my own childhood and in my work with children and art.

I put together these few images of a red and green flower as the first image as one that was created by an adult that the children has to copy.

If you look below however you will see flowers created by young children.

These were flowers created that were done by the children and thought up by the children.

The children were given the various materials and just given the assignment “Make flowers”

And they did.

And aren’t they beautiful?

Fall crafts are full of opportunities to add all sorts of outdoorsy fall leaves and other fall nature objects into art activities. (Even though we did this activity in the summer time)

This particular activity is really a tree art activity. It doesn’t only have to be done in the Fall, but since Fall is tree time,  you can concentrate on trees in your  art activities in many activities that can be done with kids.

The way we did this activity is a follows.

We took the children on a nature walk to collect all kinds of leaves.

(If that is not possible due to where you live, then if you can, you can bring in a  whole bunch of leaves for the children to work with.)

We showed the children( that’s what you have to do if they have no experience with rubbing activities).

They turned the leaves over backwards and placed a paper over each leaf  and using an unpeeled crayon  rubbed the leaves until the shapes and its veins showed through.

You can give the children either colored construction paper as seen above or plain white computer paper. (which is actually thinner)

We  had them cut out the leaves.

We presented them with a  choice of trunks to use.

You can use different brown and black materials for this, it does not have to only be the types I offered in the image below.

We gave the children a piece of tag board and had them paste the tree trunks they chose onto the tag board.

They  then used the leaves they  cut out to decorate their trees.

You can also give them other materials to add to their trees depending on what they want.

The children may want to incorporate the real leaves into their tree pictures as well.

You are not limited too rubbings and leaves for tree pictures. You can use a whole assortment of materials that children can create their own trees. In a future post I will show you materials we use.

If you want to do more art activities with trees and leaves you can find

another fall art activity with creating their own leaves which mainly concentrates on the children creating leaves.