Designed for pre-school and school-aged children, this activity is a fun way for your child to access their creative side! Working on developing fine motor skills with small painting details, kids have an opportunity to practice skills while having fun. If your child is younger, they may need assistance in gathering materials or painting their hand. This fun project develops patience and artistic skills while creating an awesome product!
You will need:
● White paper
● Paintbrushes (different sizes)
● Washable paint- Blue, green, yellow, purple, white, black, pink
● Paint tray (optional)
● A wet washcloth or paper towels
Steps:
1. Begin with grabbing your plain white piece of paper and distributing your paint colors onto a tray or plate.
2. Now, grab a paintbrush and dip into your blue paint. This will create your sky and should take up most of your paper. Leave about 2 inches of white space at the bottom of the paper for your grass and a 1-2 inch half-circle white space in the upper-left corner for your sun.
Helpful tip: Use a small amount of paint at a time to create a thin layer!
3. Time to make some grass! Dip a paintbrush in green paint and fill in the section of white space at the bottom of your paper. Start from the bottom and pull up to make it look more like grass! The green can also touch or slightly overlap onto the blue paint.
4. Next, we are going to paint our sun! In the top corner where you did not paint any blue, use a smaller brush and fill in the area with a thin layer of yellow paint.
5. Time for the messy part! Make sure your hand is clean and dry and open it wide. With your other hand, paint a thick layer of purple paint directly onto your hand.
Helpful tip: Try to paint smooth and rounded edges for your castle to be as smooth as possible.
6. Now we are going to place our castle. Place the bottom of your palm on the top of the grass and gently roll your hand down until it is flat on the paper. Press your palm and each one of your fingers down with your other hand.
Helpful tip: Lift your hand straight up after placing your castle so you don’t smear the paint!
7. Use your rag, paper towels, or the sink to wash your hand and get all of the paint off!
Helpful tip: Don’t touch any surfaces when your hand has paint on it!
8. If you have any spots that are missing paint, use your paintbrush and purple paint to fill it in!
9. Next, take your pink paint and a small paintbrush to create triangles at the top of each finger. As you can see in the picture for this step, the triangles should all be the same size and should be bigger than the fingertip!
10. Time to make windows! Use a medium-sized brush and your white paint to draw a thick line across the base of the fingers. Now, with a smaller brush, dip into the black paint and outline the white rectangle. Then, use the same black paint to draw lines throughout the rectangle, creating your windows!
Helpful tip: To make the white brighter, use multiple layers of paint!
11. Now we will make our flags! Using black paint and a thin brush draw short lines out of the top of each pink triangle. Then, swoop your brush down slightly to create a small flag!
12. Great job so far! Let’s get our white back out to create our lower windows and door. In the middle of the palm, create three small white squares for windows. Below this will be your door! Create an upside-down U at the bottom of the handprint, fill it in, and you have a door! Now outline your windows and doors with a thin brush of black paint just like you did your windows in step 10! To make the windows look more realistic, draw a black t-shape over each one.
13. You are done! You can add in some other things too if you like, maybe a bridge, horses and the people who live in the castle! Clean up your materials, wait for the castle to dry, and you can hang up your masterpiece!!!
