Why is painting important for young children

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Services expandable: Services. Clearance expandable: Clearance. Amy Vagne. Try These Painting Tools Make it easy for young kids to experiment by ensuring they have size-appropriate painting tools. Follow officeworks. Related Tags No tags found. Featured articles.

You might also like Painting can also happen in other places such as outside on paths, fences or large cardboard boxes, and in association with carpentry or collage constructions.

Painting is often thought of as an individual process but group painting is a lot of fun — try attaching a large strip of old wallpaper to a fence or place it on the ground and see what happens!

In particular, painting supports the Communication strand, where children discover and develop different ways to be creative and expressive. It also supports the Exploration strand, where children gain confidence in and control of their own bodies. This includes active exploration with all the senses and the use of tools, materials and equipment to extend skills. This play idea has been developed for playgroups. It also enables children to develop their hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness.

Children in our setting enjoy painting on our easel as well as on the trees, logs and pavement. Mixing paint with water in spray bottles is a popular activity in our outdoor classroom. The children love the challenge of squeezing the trigger on the bottle and finding out what colour paint is inside. The way the paint runs down the paper makes for lots of interesting conversations and the way the colours merge into each other opens up the possibility of exploring colour mixing in more detail too.

The sensory experience of painting hands and feet is one that many children enjoy, so placing a large sheet of paper on the floor alongside a tray full of paint and paintbrushes provides an incredibly enticing activity. As well as resulting in some amazing creations, walking with slippery, painted feet helps children to develop their balance, coordination and core stability, and also encourages them to make connections between their movements and the marks they make. The physical challenge that comes with painting with mops and plungers is one that instantly engages children.

The mud kitchen is a popular area of our outdoor provision that children love exploring — and mud painting offers them yet another way to explore this wonderful sensory material. By mixing mud with a little water and food colouring, it makes great paint!

The children will not be able to see which colour they are using until they begin painting, which helps to fire their sense of curiosity and wonder. Whenever you invite children to be creative, remember that your focus should be on the process and the learning that takes place, not the end result or producing 30 identical pieces of art.