Painting with Cotton balls

Alexa and I had such a great time painting with cotton balls on egg drawings for some Easter decorations last week. I used the homemade finger paints we made last week for this activity. The paints were a little thicker than I would prefer and I think next time we might use some other washable paints that are a bit runnier. 

All you need for this activity is a paper plate to put the paints on, a few clothespins (one for each color of paint you want), washable paint, a smock (optional) and paper to paint on. We used paper that I drew eggs onto.

Alexa was very curious about the cotton ball on the clothespin, but once I showed her how to dab it on the paper or use it like a crayon, she got right down to it! She liked dabbing it, but the paint needed to be replenished rather quickly. We still came out with some pretty great egg decorations.

This was a quick activity and didn't leave much in the form of clean up. I just unclipped the clothespins from the cotton balls and then tossed the paint plate along with the cotton balls right into the trash. Since we used a smock, Alexa was pretty clean. After washing hands, we were all cleaned up!

We will definitely do this again in the future. Another variation that I'd like to try sometime soon is painting with pompons. I bet it would make some pretty cool looking paint splotches on the paper.