Every mom LOVES their preschool child’s hand print. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t. My heart melts every time my daughter brings home art work from school. Being that she loves loves arts & crafts so much I finally decided to do in home painting projects with her. To be honest, I’ve tried to avoid it as long as I could to avoid having to clean up a huge mess. As you can see Jeremiah makes it pretty hard for me to trust there not being many messes.
Being that St. Patricks Day is right around the corner I decided to go with a themed St. Patty craft project. What’s St. Patrick’s Day without a pot of gold & rainbows!? ? So I decided on a handprint rainbow project. All you need are a set of (non toxic) paints so you have all the colors of the rainbow, paper and paper plates. If you want to be fancy you can get gold coin chocolate candy. I opted to use actual pennies (after cleaning them). Not only are these really fun to make they’ll also make great keepsakes where you can look back and see how tiny your kids hands were once upon a time!
Materials:
- black & white construction paper
- scissors
- nontoxic washable paint (rainbow colors)
- all purpose glue
- foil wrappers (from gold coin chocolate candy) or pennies (cleaned)
- white paint pen (not pictured) – optional
Steps:
1. Paint the child’s hand each color in the order of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple).
2. Press the painted hand down onto white paper to make a hand print (arching the handprints) *Repeat for each color* Let dry.
3. Glue foil wrappers (or pennies) onto the white paper at the base of the hand print. Overlap them a little. (Don’t forget to enjoy the chocolate coins if you choose this option)
4. Cut out a half circle pot shape from the black paper. Glue black pot onto the white paper just below the gold coins. Overlap the coins a little to make it look like they are inside the pot. Let the glue dry.
5. Use the white paint pen to write “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” on the pot of gold. (Optional)
We let Jeremiah use the Montessori approach during this during this activity. Xiomara was super excited to “play with coins” and go over her colors. Of course I wanted to jump in and make the project super neat but then again I wanted it to their work of art. Anyway, their rainbows turned out super cute & my kids really enjoyed this activity. What kid wouldn’t? If you try this activity, share it with me! Take a photo of your little ones enjoying this activity and post on social media – tag @MarriedToMotherhood.
Love this! I can’t wait to try it! Where did you get your activity table from?