Fine Motor Salt Painting

Preschool Toddler CraftsFine Motor Activities

As we jump right into homeschooling preschool, we’re starting this fun new journey with an All About Me theme and since nothing seems to excite a preschooler more than seeing their name everywhere, I figured we’d start there.

Now, my little guy loves art.  He loves coloring, drawing, and painting, but his fine motor skills need some practice.

So to get us going, we created a work of art using his name (and a few other fun shapes) while also working in a little small motor workout.

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This activity not only gives you the chance to cover the letters in your child’s name, but a little color recognition as well!

Start out by gathering a few supplies.  Don’t worry!  There aren’t many!

For your actual painting, you’ll need:

• School glue
• Salt
• Water colors (or just mix some food coloring and water)

Now, of course, you’re going to need something to paint on and something to paint with :)

• • Construction paper
  • Pipettes (small droppers)

And that’s it!  You’re ready to paint!

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Go ahead and write your child’s name in big letters across a sheet of construction paper.  As I put the letters on the paper, I made sure that they were spaced out enough that he could easily see each letter individually and we named each letter as we put it on the page.

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Now prepare to make a little bit of a mess :)  Give your child the salt and show them how to sprinkle it all over the glue letters.  Make sure that all of your letters are covered completely and once they are, gently pour off the excess salt from your paper.

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Time for the fun part!

We mixed some water and food coloring into individual cups and added a pipette to each one.  You could easily just use one or two pipettes for all of your colors but I wanted to make sure that he would be able to actually see all of the colors rather than just have them all mix together and turn brown.

When your colors are ready, just hand your child the paints, show them how to squeeze the pipettes and let them go!  (Well, maybe not literally.  We don’t need any multicolored carpets around here.)

Keeping your colors separate until they hit the salt allows for a really cool effect and some really beautiful artwork.

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As a fun little surprise, your child will get to watch the color grow after they add a few drops of paint onto their name as the salt absorbs it.  Not only is that a pretty cool effect, but it makes for some fun new colors as well!