With everything going on with Covid-19, understandably all of our local Easter Egg Hunts were canceled. The boys were pretty bummed, and although we have some egg filled goodies ready for them to hunt on Easter, we wanted to spread some joy to our friends and neighbors.
We decided to put on our own little “egg hunt” by painting rocks and hiding them around our neighborhood. We got lucky and found some random bags of rocks from a project my husband did a few years ago that we used. Then the boys went crazy painting rocks. I thought the boys might get bored after painting a couple rocks, but surprisingly they painted around 30. They aren’t very picturesque- most just looked like the paint is randomly globbed on and patchy, however the love behind them truly makes them stunning!
Honestly, art activities like this kind of make me cringe. I hate the mess making that comes with small children and paint. I also had a hard time not micromanaging them to create actual designs instead of my preconceived notions. It was a good experience for all of us- me in getting patience and the boys in creative art fun.
Ingredients & Instructions
Instructions:
- Wash your rocks and let them dry.
- Put down a drop cloth, newspaper, or anything that will protect your furniture from paint splatters.
- Place the paint on a paper plate or tray.
- Let the kids go wild! Every kid is an artist in their own right.
- Place rocks in a safe place to dry. With the current weather, ours were mostly dry within 4-6 hrs.
- Once rocks are dry, you can add a thin cover of modpodge to protect the painting from elements (we didn’t have any!). You can also add detail work, sayings, googly eyes, etc at this point.
- Take a walk and hide the rocks for your neighbors. Prior to hiding, we washed hands throughly and took our sanitizer with us. We carefully sprayed each rock after setting it down to minimize the risk to our neighbors.
We also placed our blog name on the back and hope people will post/share photos if they find them!
Benefits Of Letting Kids Paint
This process art sneaks in a lot of important learning! When the kids paint these rocks, they are:
- Practicing and gaining fine muscle control and strengthening eye-hand motor coordination. By holding paintbrushes and learning how to control the paint, as well as grasping the rocks, children focus on skills necessary for later writing activities.
- The opportunity to make choices and solve problems. Children make decisions about what colors they use, how to apply them to the rock, and if they will be using a pattern or solid color, to name a few.
- Problem Solving! When the children makes choices, they learn that some of the choices don’t turn out as expected. How can they remove paint once it is on the rock? Also, spills will happen – how best to clean up these spills?
- Experiencing different points of view. The children will find that their siblings paint their rocks differently. Why did they choose yellow while you chose green? It opens up conversations and discussions about why we like different things.
- Imagination and Creativity! There are so many ways they can create their rock masterpieces.
Did you find one of our rocks? Please share an image with us on Instagram or Facebook! Did you do your own rock egg hunt? Tell us below!
Awesome post.|