This week we have been busy printing with vegetables.
I needed an activity to do at the childminding group on Monday and on Sunday I still hadn’t thought of anything that I was happy with. It was the smell of rotting potatoes as I opened the cupboard that put me onto this idea! I had an idea saved on my pinterest board, that showed using cookie cutters to make stamps from potatoes. This was so easy! Just press the cookie cutter into the potato, as far as it will go and then use a knife to cut up to the cookie cutter. Although I was very impressed with how these turned out, the activity still didn’t feel quite right for me.
So I decided to add some fruit and vegetables for printing. This tied in nicely with our own focus on growing vegetables at the moment.
I am quite conscious of the views of some people about using food in play, so wanted to made sure we made as much use as these as possible..
I set the activities up at the childminding group and the table was busy all morning. The group can be quite hectic and my own children much preferred to play outside, so I didn’t really get to see how the children interacted with the resources.
As I said, I wanted to make full use of the resources, so set the activity up again when we got home.
M had been at pre-school anyway so he doesn’t come to the group with us in the morning and Jess came over to play in the afternoon, so she got to join in!
They seemed to prefer the fruit and vegetable as opposed to the stamps.
Here are a couple of their finished creations.
With the fruit and vegetables ……
…and with the stamps.
Well I wasn’t finished with the fruit and vegetables yet!
The little ones still hadn’t had a go.
I set the activity up in a different way for them. The potato stampers weren’t really much good any more so I didn’t bother with them. I gave each child a tray of paint with 3 or 4 vegetables in. Although I selected colours that matched the vegetables as far as possible, I didn’t particularly worry about putting the vegetables with their corresponding colour as the little ones haven’t yet shown an interest in colour and I wanted the focus to be on making marks with the vegetables.
I did have my doubts about doing this activity with the little ones, convinced they would end up eating the vegetables and the paint!
But once again the children surprised me!
To say they enjoyed this activity would be an understatement. We do regular painting activities but this one really caught their attention.
Using sweetcorn like a pen
Dipping…
…and dabbing broccoli and cauliflower…
…rolling sweetcorn (this was a favourite!)…
I noticed those little fingers were exploring the feel of the vegetables!
And no paint mouths!
The only thing I forgot to do was to take photos of their finished masterpieces, but you can sort of get an idea from this picture.
