Giant Santa's Village Painting - Happy Toddler Playtime

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INSIDE: Giant Santa’s Village Painting is a super easy and fun giant painting activity for toddlers and preschoolers! Such a wonderful way to painting during the holidays!

Looking for more Fun Christmas Crafts & Activities? Check out these fun ideas:

Giant Santa’s Village Painting

Here is a super easy painting activity for the Holidays. My three year old had been asking for a painting activity all day. The girls were crafting at what we call the Crafting Table so I decided to finally set up a painting activity for him. This immediately came to mind. We have a mini Santa’s Village decorating our sideboard and the idea of painting one seemed like such a fun idea. I asked my three year old what he thought and he looooved the idea.

I quickly drew this little scenery with village houses and trees. Then I placed on washable paints into a muffin tin and added a few paint brushes and he immediately went to town painting.

This kept my little energetic three year old engaged painting for quite a while. I sat and painted with him for little bit but them got up to do some work and he stayed. This was a total hit in my books!!

Tips for Stress Free Painting This Holidays

To contain the mess, I taped down cardboard around the Santa Village painting particularly where is he sitting and underneath the paint. You can also lay a plastic sheet or old shower curtain liner underneath everything before taping it down. I also instructed him to keep the paint on the paper as much as possible. He did such a good job with that despite being super engrossed in his task!

My other tips for stress free painting with kids includes dressing for the mess. I like to just keep my kids in their pjs while we paint. That way we can immediately change after and I am not worried about ruining good clothes with paints. Another option is put them into an oversized old t-shirt that can fit over all their clothes.

But what about paints? Yes and that leads me into my next tip – choose the right paints. Make sure the paints you use are washable paints. I find tempera paints work best for kids. Unlike acrylic paint which is nice for coverage, tempera paints are non-toxic and are much easier to wash out of clothing, skin and other surfaces.

My next tip for making painting with kids easy is to have a plan for how you display your paints. This will go a long way to containing the mess. I like to use things like muffin tins or colourful bowls that have deep pockets to contain the mess. But you can also purchase spill proof paint containers. You might also consider just placing dabs of paint on the surface to be painted instead of having an entire bowl filled with paint.

My next tip is one that I mentioned above – getting down and painting with them. Sitting down and joining in on the painting activity with your kids goes a long way towards putting them in the right space to paint and follow any guidelines you have set out for them. Fill their cup as the activity is being done will help make it last longer and go smoother.

My final tip is to limit the number of colours you give your child. It is not always necessary to give your kids every single colour in the rainbow in order to create a colourful painting experience. In fact, more colours usually ends up looking like a muddy mess. Setting out the primary colours and inviting them to mix the colours to create others (which my kids end up doing anyways!) is a great way to help contain the mess. Or giving them colours that a close to each other on the colour wheel like red, orange and yellow and not colours like blue and orange.

Armed with these tips, will you try this giant Santa’s Village Painting activity this holiday?

Age Suitability

This activity is more of a parent activity to make for your kids. Advent calendars are great for all ages! My kids are 3.5, 3.5, and 7 year old.

Supplies

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Butcher paper
Washable paints
Paint brushes
Muffin Tin
Cardboard box
Painters Tape

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