Mirrored Easter Egg Painting

Minne-Mama is on Facebook! 'Like' us to stay updated on our fun crafts and activities! 
Thank you for stopping by! 

Oooh, this was a fun one!

Yesterday, we had a very busy morning with story time and errands, and Skyler ended up falling asleep in the car for about five minutes on the way home. I gave him some lunch and put him down right away for a nap...but for the first time ever he did not nap. I kept thinking, "oh, he laid down, maybe he will fall asleep," but nope, he would be right back up, doing laps around his crib. I knew it would be the perfect afternoon to whip out this painting activity.

I admitted on Facebook last night that I ended up taking around 500 pictures of this activity. Well, the entire activity. For this post, I narrowed it down from 245 to 28, and boy, was it hard! Skyler was so into this activity and I couldn't help but take picture after picture! Anyone else do this?!

For this simple Easter inspired painting activity, I cut some egg shapes out of white poster board and taped them onto a mirror that is in Skyler's room (he spent a lot of time in front of it as a baby!) I gathered some egg shaped painting tools including various colored plastic eggs and a cookie cutter.

When I got Skyler up from his non-nap I put some blue, red, yellow, and green paint into plastic cups and added white to each cup as well. Skyler helped me by stirring all of the colors, making our plain finger paints into beautiful spring pastel colors!

We did a little color match and put the pink, pale yellow, green, and blue eggs into the corresponding paint cup and it was time to create! Skyler immediately started by cracking an egg open and making some circle prints!

He quickly switched colors and tried painting with the entire egg.

And he was hooked! He moved from pink to yellow and then green quickly (as he typically will do - he has to try everything to figure out what is best)! For awhile he switched between the four paints, making prints with the eggs and cookie cutter and using the eggs to smear the paint around.

After awhile he noticed that his hands were covered with paint. At first it was a little bit of a shock, and then he thought it was funny. Once he saw his paint covered hands, he really got into it.

Skyler's favorite method was using the eggs to coat his hand in paint and then raising his arm above his head, throwing it forward and making hand prints all over the paper (and sometimes the mirror). It was so fun to watch him. He would add a little paint, make a bunch of prints quickly, check out his hand to see if he had enough paint, and then repeat the process!

He also liked to place his hand down and then smear the paint before lifting his hand up.

He ended up with a pink cheek and blue hair!!

A side smear :)

This is what Skyler did over and over. Paint, smack, smack, smack, repeat.

I have never seen Skyler get so involved with a "messy" activity. Even with the muddy track painting we did. He really loved that, painting the entire poster board, but he was more timid and seemed more uncomfortable when the paint ended up all over him. By the end of this mirror painting, his arms, face, hair, legs, and obviously hands, were completely coated and he thought it was great!

This painting activity was the perfect way to spend our afternoon. It kept my sleepy guy very entertained and we spent at least an hour painting, talking about the shapes of the eggs, the colors he was using, where the paint was on his body, and his methods of painting.

Skyler didn't care as much about the mirror part of the activity as I thought he would, but it was still nice - something different to try!

And in the end, we have these beautiful finished eggs. It is fun for me to look at them because I remember so vividly how each one was decorated. I see the egg he used the plastic eggs and cookie cutter for, the egg he made by slapping his hand down, the egg with the up smears, and then egg with the side smears. I also love how he used every color.

I never thought I would be so happy to have a day without Skyler napping ;)

The inspiration for this activity came from a mix of these two posts:
The Reflection Table by Teach Preschool
Painting the Night by Twodaloo