arts & crafts for a toddler

[Anonymous]

My 15 month old can scribble and I'd like to try to get him doing other "crafty" things too..is play-doh appropriate at this age? Finger painting?

We have an easel and some paintbrushes. What kinds of things is he ready for and any recommendations for finger paint, play-doh, other such items?

[Anonymous]

I would think he's a bit young for play-doh. Do you have aquadoodle?

[Anonymous]

My 15 month old loves play doh. Loves to EAT it, that is! DS had to move his collection so DD can't get to it.

DD is pretty happy scribbling with her crayons right now. She grabbed one of DS's stamps last night, but promptly tried to taste that, too, so i wouldn't recommend stamps. What about a magnadoodle? Big stickers?

[Anonymous]

We do play-doh with my 16-month-old. Definitely a supervised thing and we do it on a yoga mat on the floor. She likes rolling little balls and helping cut things out with cookie cutters.

[Anonymous]

My daycare started play-dough at about that age - as long as its supervised, you should be ok. (Though if your toddler is still in a mouthing phase, I'd hold off). Another brilliant idea they had was fingerpainting with vanilla pudding (add a couple drops of food coloring to make "paint") That way, if they eat it, it's ok!

They/we also introduced crayons, washable markers, stamps (he didn't get the hang of keeping the stamps on the paper 'til 18 months or so), washable paint (messy!)

[Anonymous]

My kids loved play dough at that age. They were both good about not eating or putting things in their mouth. They were not able to use all the tools that come with the sets but loved just squishing it and stacking it.

Fingerpaints are good. If your child can scribble s/he should also be able to use a brush, sponge, or roller brush. Washable tempura is great. I used to cut out shapes from construction paper that they would put together pieces of white paper. We didn't start gluing things until around age 2.

[Anonymous]

This is helpful.

Logistical question here -- when you had your little one painting (fingerpainting or brushes)...

1) what kind of paint did you use?
2) did you have them stand at an easel or sit?

[Anonymous]

My DD loved playdoh at that age and didn't try to eat it. Of course, it's not something she did by herself. She also started finger paints. Something we both thought was fun was to put a big piece of paper on the floor (like the size of a baby blanket), strip her naked, and let her finger paint. Some of my favorite pictures... I used Crayola washables. She might also be able to string big pieces of ziti onto a string to make a necklace. My DD was a little older when we did this, but it may work at 15 month. She can color or paint them first.