2 year old art activities?

Question

2 year old art activities?

Answer 1

Try to keep it open-ended. For example, provide the materials and watch them work with them. Do not say things like, "that looks like a ......"  and DO NOT provide your own pretty example. Art should be their own creation not your craft.  Toddlers LOVE the process more than the end product!  Let them go for it.....  :-)

Answer 2

are you asking for suggestions? well anything that they can get messy with...finger painting. you can do one of those clay handprint things that will be a great memory for you to see how small he or she was and how much they have grown. edible art lol like a cellarie stick/peanut butter and ritz cracker car.

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Answer 3

So glad to see you use the word "art" instead of craft.  :-)  At 2 years old, children need a lot of hands-on open ended art and the good news is that they benefit from repetition.  Not only do they like to use the same materials but after the first initial introduction they then begin to explore.  

Fingerpaint is one of the most common art activities in Toddler rooms.  Kids love and benefit from this sensory experience and it also helps with their fine motor skills as well as the benefits they get from "marking" and making lines.  We can use fingerpaint to introduce and review colors and color mixing; it can also be used for introduction to textures.

Examples of what you can do with fingerpaint:  

Start out with just one color.  Provide a couple simple tools for the children who do not wish to touch it or provide children's plastic gloves.

Provide different types of tools.

Fill adult or child sized plastic gloves with different materials such as corn, oatmeal, foam, pom poms, etc and let them paint with these hands.  This is ALWAYS a hit.

Provide 2 primary colors.

Provide a color with white.  Same with black.

Add texture- a bit of sand, a bit of sawdust, maybe some liquid starch...oh the list is endless what you can add.  Search for homemade fingerpaint and come up with an abundance of different recipes!

Other art activities.

Painting on bubblewrap is neat.  You can vary it by using big bubbles or little bubbles.  You can use lotion instead of paint.  You can add soap to your paint and it makes lots of bubbles. :-)

Cup printing:  sturdy cups and paint.  Use a complentary piece of construction paper.  Black paint on yellow paper is really neat.  They dip the cups into the paint and then onto the paper and it makes circles.  If you add lots of soap to your paint it will actually cause a bubble that will stick to the paper for a few moments and then pop into a neat circle.  My toddlers loved this.

"Marble" painting- I don't recommend marbles unless you are working with groups of 2.  :-)  I like to use golf balls with this age group.  You can have 2 children work cooperatively to move a box as a variation.  This age loves for me to put a paper inside of an oatmeal container; add the painted "marbles" and replace the lid (possible tape).  THe kids love to roll the container back and forth.  You can make the project theme related by providing a theme related shape.

Painting in general- on a table top, on a wall, on a window/door, outside, inside of a box, at an easel.  Use different tools, even homemade ones like newspaper brushes.  We even did dandelion painting...went and picked some fresh dandelions...what fun!

Wet chalk is pretty neat.  More fun outside...have a bucket of water near by to dip the chalk in. I usually do this when the chalk is about read for out because it "eats" through the chalk really fast.  But oh, how fun.  The kids made chalk "puddles" and then printed their hands and feet on the sidewalk.

Collages are wonderful for this age group.  An easy on is contact paper sticky side out.  Provide items for them to put on and take off.  Foam shapes work best.  You can pretty much come up with a collage for any theme.  Vary the types of glue you use, vary your background shape/color, vary your collage materials.

We made butterfly blots... I helped them cut out a butterfly and folded it in half and taped it so only one half was showing.  Then they used qtips and glitter paint to paint the one side.  Then I helped them press the other half together and then we opened it.  Yes, I used the vocab word "symmetry".

Do a dot markers are really neat.  Rubberbanding them or taping them together makes a neat picture as well.

One of their favorite is sand art.  I provide black construction paper and liquid glue bottles and it's the one time they can drizzle to their heart's content.  (They love to drizzle glue...corn syrup is neat to drizzle as well but it doesn't dry :-) but it's the process not the product, eh? But back to the drizzle- there are homemade paste recipes that you can use so the kids can drizzle all they want and you don't need to worry about "waste".)  Squeezing a glue bottle is a great hand strengthener.  I then provide sand and they use their "pincher" fingers to sprinkle that sand over their glue.  

Squishers:  I tried hot gluing film canisters to margarine lids but it didn't work well and we found out that it's just as much fun without the "handles".  Put some paint on their paper and let them move and squish the paint with the margarine lids.  Makes neat designs.

May one of these be a help to you.  If you search the internet for toddler/preschool art activities you'll get an abundance.  Most preschool ideas can be adjusted to make it appropiate for toddlers.

Good luck!

Answer 4

Are you looking for specific examples?

We made flag for the 4th of July.  The children were given a white sheet of construction paper, red stripes, blue rectangles and star stickers.  I put glue on each piece and the children pasted them however they wanted.

Today we made hippos (for zoo theme), I cut out the pieces and they glued them together.  No two looked the same, or resembled a hippo.

For a farm theme we made cows.  I gave them a picture of a cow and had them glue on the "spots" that I had cut out of brown or black construction paper.  We also did roosters for this theme.  The children were given a picture of a rooster and glued feathers to each one.  A lamb was also done.  The children had a picture of a lamb and were given given cotton balls to glue on.

For a fruit theme, we did baskets of blue berries.  The children were given a copy of a basket and blue circles to glue on.  We also did grapes.  The children were able to choose purple or green circles to glue on another piece of paper to look like a bunch of grapes.

I know that children are not supposed to use copied pictures, but I use them as a starting point for the children.  I have not had any complaints from parents, my director or our licensing official.

I hope this helps