Are you looking for some easy ways to introduce art to your baby or toddler? Or maybe you like art, but you’re not sure where to start with your own child? Check out our list of colourful ideas, from fun days out to relaxed play sessions at home.
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1. Do Some Messy Painting At Home – Baby Art Ideas
Use washable paint for finger, hand-printing and footprinting or use paint dabbers. You can also make edible paint using cornflour, water and food colouring so that if little babies put it in their mouths it won’t harm them. You can be as messy as you like with this sort of paint! Some babies/pre-walkers may like to dab their knees and feet in paint and crawl or toddle across a big sheet of paper – you could do this outside if you have paving slabs.
2. Check Out Pictures And Postcards In Friend’s Houses
If your friends and family have children, chances are they’ll have some art work lying around or up on the walls, often done by children! See if your baby responds to particular styles and colours while admiring your friend’s children’s creations.
Most homes are also good places to see artwork, postcards and magnets on the walls and cupboards.
3. Experiment With Water Painting – Baby Art Ideas
Help develop your baby or toddler’s gross motor skills with a large block brush dipped in water. Just use a brush designed for sheds and fences. If you are indoors, find a cardboard box or shoebox for you and your child to ‘paint’. If outdoors, you can use whatever surface will dry quite quickly – a shed, fence, wall, treehouse, paving slab, driveway or path.
4. Play With Playdough
Playdough is such a sensory and textile material. It’s great for baby to prod, push, squash and squish in their hands. And it’s really easy to make your own playdough as well using edible ingredients that’s extra safe for babies. Just mix plain flour with salt, warm water, food colouring and a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Toddlers can help with the mixing and kneading too.
5. Go To A Café Or Shop – Introduce Art To Baby Ideas
Much like window shopping, you can go shop front art hunting with your baby in the pram or carrier. Tourist offices often display art by local artists, while cafés have art on the walls to sell. Once you start looking around, you’ll see art everywhere you go. You can hold young babies up or walk around with them so the art is more at eye level. The bigger and bolder it is, the better – babies will see contrasts in colours and shapes.
6. Dabble In Chalk Painting – Introduce Art To Baby Ideas
Your baby may have developed a palmer grip in which case they can begin to hold on to chunky pavement chalks. Scribble on paper, the floor, a shed or a fence, depending on what you have to hand! The local park can be a good place to try for pavement art – use a safe path. And it will wash away afterwards as well!
7. Go To A Messy Play Or Arts & Crafts Baby Class
Class providers recognise how valuable art and messy play can be for baby’s early development. So search here for an art or messy play class to suit you, and have fun meeting other parents as well.
8. Paint Or Draw In Front Of Your Baby
If you enjoyed drawing, painting and colouring before having your baby, why not continue it as a hobby now your baby is here? Sketch something in the room that both you and your baby can see, or continue with an art project you’ve started. Even a mindfulness colouring book is great for sharing different colours, shapes and patterns with your baby. Geometric patterns help introduce your baby to very early maths concepts as well.
9. Look At Art And Posters in And Baby Group Venues, Libraries and Bookshops
Community centres, libraries and other common baby group venues all use posters as a way of advertising. Luckily for us, these posters are usually bright and colourful – perfect for stimulating your baby’s sense of vision.
10. Make Oobleck – Introduce Art To Baby Ideas
Oobleck is a very fun gloopy substance that acts like both a liquid and a solid. Push it with your finger and it will feel hard to move. Pick it up and it will drip or run down like water. Your baby can really get their hands stuck in. It’s simple to make Oobleck by mixing water and cornflour together. Hours of fun experimenting- and we can guarantee parents will love this one as well!
11. Go For A Wander At A Modern Art Gallery Like The Tate Modern
Explore the free galleries at the Tate Modern, Tate St. Ives and Tate Liverpool – or you can venture into a paid exhibition if you’re a member. The Tate Modern often has interactive art and activities for toddlers and children, so you can wander into that bit as well. Even very young babies who still see the world in black and white should respond to big geometrical shapes like circles and squares. Modernist paintings like Henri Matisse’s The Snail is particularly bright and colourful. Many towns have local art galleries to explore as well.
12. Get Arty With Dry Ingredients From The Kitchen
Dry rice, pasta, spaghetti, oats and flour are all safe ingredients you can have easily to hand in the kitchen for your baby to play with. Your baby can start to learn how different materials feel and act. If you use bowls for different ingredients they can mix and tip them out, swish them with their hands and even (with some help) stick them together if you want to make a dry pasta and spaghetti ‘sculpture’! See here for more sensory play ideas. You can also add water if you want to get really messy.
13. Check Out Your Local Town Museum
The museum round the corner from you may be more about local history or something else. However, many museums will often have free temporary exhibitions of local art, or travelling artworks and illustrations. Quentin Blake’s pictures have been touring recently, as well as artwork from The Snowman. You and your older child or toddlers should enjoy this art as well.
14. Find A Local Sculpture Park or Garden
For those of you living in or near Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Sculpture park is a huge area to wander around for a family day out, with lots to see outdoors as well as some inside space and a cafe. There are also Henry Moore’s gardens in Hertfordshire, Dartington Estate in Devon and loads of other sculpture parks around Britain.
15. Visit A Stately Home – Introduce Art To Baby Ideas
Going to a stately home may seem an unusual one for a young baby, but there will be plenty to help stimulate their senses. Think ‘square’ cows, pictures of horses, sweeping landscapes and well-known landmarks (which you’ll enjoy looking at too).
Want to get out and about, have fun with your baby or toddler, and meet other parents?
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