Anyone have any good art activities for one year olds in a daycare. Looking for themes for the month of April?

Question

Anyone have any good art activities for one year olds in a daycare. Looking for themes for the month of April?

Answer 1

ughh... I hate it when people talk about crafts with kids. Anyone can read up on it - Crafts are NOT developmentally appropriate for kids. Sorry, I just needed to respond to your first answerer.

Art on the other hand is expressive and allows them to be creative. What good is it for the children if you are doing all of the cutting, gluing,so on?

I suggest....(with one on one supervision if possible) fingerpainting with either non-toxic fingerpaint or pudding, or even using brushes. You can somehow incorporate Spring into this, by using pastel colors maybe. You could also have them glue little foam shapes (like flowers, or whatever you have) - by letting them dip the paintbrush into the glue, putting it onto the paper and then allowing them to push the foam piece on. ( I normally tell the babies "Pat pat pat" or something along those lines, to get some communication going). Of course you will have to do this hand over hand almost the entire time, so be prepared to do it one on one.

good luck!

Answer 2

finger painting with pudding

stickers on a flower

color a flower

collages with glue -

just keep it simple and very well supervised -this age puts everything in their mouths as I'm sure you well know.

Answer 3

http://familyfun.com

April showers.

Spring time

Answer 4

You could cut out large rain drops and let them paint with blue paint.  You could get some grass, flowers, leaves, etc.  and have them use those things to paint.  You could let them glue sand on to paper, this is a sensory activity.

Answer 5

www.dltk.com

has great crafts for all ages, I do crafts with my sons everyday they are 2 and almost 4. We use this website alot.

My youngest also liked the shapes collage we made.  I cut out shapes and colored them and glued the backs with a glue stick, turned them upside down beside him and let him stick them on the paper where he wanted, he thought t was great!  Good luck..one year olds are tough :)

Megan..You are exactly the reason I home pre-school my son.I want him doing more than making a mess with paint or pudding!!!!  Painting is only one of many ways to enjoy time with your children.  My sons LOVE doing crafts with me. And they do learn by watching and copying what parts I do. I talk to my kids and say more than "PAT PAT" ..They do most of it on their own but when it comes to handing a 1 yr old scissors..no thanks.  We work with shapes and colors and letters.  I can gaurantee my 3 yr old son is one of the smartest children around.  They gave him  the kindergarten readiness test and passed!! at 3!!! So it seems to me my way is working beautifully.  We make all of our own decorations for the holidays.  Doing crafts with children is a fun way to interact with them and they love the results! I do agree it isn't the only thing they should do in regards to learning but it is a fun, safe, and educating activity to do!

Answer 6

this isnt really for the month of april, although you could use pastel colors i guess?

last year during my internship i was in a 1-year old classrom and finding activities for them to do without me doing all the work was TOUGH! so anyways, we came across this really cool idea and the 1 year olds love it. all you need is a plastic bin about the size of a sheet of paper and about 5 or 6 inches deep. put some cunstruction paper in the bottom of the bin and fill some paper or styrofoam bowls with different colors of paint. dip a golf ball in one of the colors (cover the whole ball) and drop it in the bin (on top of the paper). let the child shake, jiggle bounce the bin or whatever he or she pleases to create a pattern on the paper. continue dipping golf balls and dropping them in the bin. we called it golf ball painting.

another fun one is string painting. take different colors of paint dip a string in them and allow the kids to drag the strings across the paper or swirl them around on the paper, anything goes!

ps. both of these activities are also developing the fine and gross motor skills of the child =]

Answer 7

My thoughts exactly, Megan!   "Crafts" are really not developmentally-appropiate and really who does most of the work?  The adult.

You definately want to think more "process" than product at this age.  Spring---April Showers, mud, flowers etc.

Fingerpainting is wonderful... and you can do a series of fingerpaintings just by tweaking it a bit.  Fingerpaint or pudding was suggested and it's a great idea.  Add texture by adding sand, add different tools to make different designs.  If you don't like sending home the plain rectangle fingerpainted designs then just cut out their first letter of their name, a shape your are working on or a theme-related shape.  Another thing that the kids here enjoyed was to paint right on the table or a tray and then make prints with a shape or regular paper.  This works better if you do not have fingerpaint paper to work with because year olds tend to definately use their "muscles" and the paper often moves around even if it was taped down!

"Splashing through the mud"... plan a time to actually go out and stomp in the water and get dirty in the mud.  Encourage the parents to send in an extra set of clothing or a rain coat...but do it with bare feet!!!  These kids love this!  It washes off with a bit of water.  Then as a follow-up... paint their feet brown and have them walk on a long strip of paper.  If you want it to look very interesting have each child's feet a different color and do on the same sheet of paper.

Flowers- cut out or die cut simple flower shapes with no center.  Help them glue them onto construction paper and then add glitter to the center of each flower.  Provide different colored flowers for them to choose from so their parents can reinforce color names at home.

I have found that you can get some "cheap" (dollar store) water bottles that are pretty easy for the children to squeeze.  If you have access to "powdered paint" help each child sprinkle a little on their paper and then spray with water.  You can do the same thing with washable markers.

Provide paper plates and washable markers.  Have them "draw" all over the plate.  When it rains take them outside and watch what happens.  You can trim the edges of the paper plate to look like a flower.

Providing two different colored paints for fingerpainting, roller painting, or chubby brush painting provides some "awed" looks from these little ones.  If you want more "spring" provide a bold color and white.  Again, you can always cut it out into a theme related shape.

Something that is very interesting to observe is to provide imagination paper.  This is done over a period of time and with various media from chunky crayons to paint, to markers, to pencils.  Just use your imagination to create the paper.  I like to start out with "negative shape" paper where I cut out a large shape out of the center of the paper...again you can do theme related.  Use the cut-out to glue on a constrasting colored paper as another sheet of imagination paper.  It's very interesting to observe youngsters over a period of time.  At first they may scribble all over it without any notice of the difference but then you begin to observe that they are starting to draw around the shape or just inside the shape etc.  

Rain Drops.  Do outside or inside of a box to help keep mess down.  Place light blue or white paper in the bottom of the box.  Provide dark blue paint and various tools to drip watered down paint inside to make rain drops.  I would suggest that you allow for at least two papers per child since you'll want to observe the first one and change their papers before it turns into a blob of blue paint.  Then allow them to do it as long as they wish on the second paper.  Remember it's the process not the product.  Then when dry, help them add an umbrella (which you could have them decorate) and add the words "Rain rain go away, little (Anna) wants to play."

I have taken a shape and lightly taped it inside of an oatmeal canister and had the children help me placed marbles that have been dipped in paint inside the canister.  Put the lid back on and roll it back in forth with the child singing favorite songs.  Then when the child loses interest in the rolling you show them what their shape looks like now.  Be sure to show them what it looks like before you put it in the box.

Well..I could go on but this is rather long.  Hope some of these helped!

Answer 8

youcan get flowers as this is spring and let them put the flowers on paper to make their own flower bed/gardens. you can use real ones or fake ones. you can make them out of constructiuon paper. lil kids love  pretty flowers