I have very fond memories of doing crafts with my mom so it was important for me that I create opportunities for our kids to have those same kinds of memories. When Iddo was 2.5 weeks old she did her first craft project – a 4th of July shirt, which we’ve repeated every year. Since then we’ve had a lot of fun doing different art projects.
While you can find a million and one ways to have a child do a hand or foot print and then have an adult decorate it, I wanted the majority of the crafts we did to involve their creativity as much as possible, not mine. Iddo now LOVES to do hand prints with the ink pad. Here are some of the things we’ve done with hand and feet prints and what ages we did them at.
Independence Day Shirts – 2.5 weeks old, 1 year old, 2 years old and 2 months old. At two I put the paint down for the stripes and she squiggled it around with her finger by herself.
Turkey prints – 5 months old, 1.5 years old.
Foot Note Pad – 6 months old (the hat was a heel smudge). I’ll talk about the background next week.
Valentine Hearts – 8 months old. I used freezer paper as the stencil, helped her do hand prints all over, and then removed the freezer paper.
Pipe-cleaner caterpillars in the grass – 9 months old. We did hand prints for the grass and sky. I gave her pipe cleaner pieces expecting her to crumple them. She was more interested in eating them. We’d probably have better luck with this one now.
Mother’s Day flowers – 11 months old. She was supposed to help color the grass but wasn’t into the crayons yet.
Father’s Day grapes – 1 year old.
Footprints – 1 year old. This was a blast. She’d just started walking and needed a bit of help to make sure she didn’t slip while she had paint on her feet. We were all laughing. I taped four papers to the ground outside and we used tempera paint so it would wash off the patio.
Snowflake Prints – 1.5 years old. I cut out some snowflakes and glued them down and then she painted over them. It was supposed to be more like finger painting over them but she decided to do hand prints instead. And since it was her art project we let her do what she wanted.
Butterfly and Initials – Almost 2 and 2 weeks old. It’s a lot easier to do footprints when they are brand new, so I helped the babies do footprint initials. Iddo is older so we did her hands and her feet and then she colored to add her own flair to the butterfly.
Fall Leaves – 2 years and 2 months old, 3 months old. Iddo did her trees in a series. I instructed her to use just her finger tips to make “leaves” for the trees. By the fifth tree she was using her whole hand and really getting in to it. After doing the leaves I drew a tree trunk for her on the first tree and had her color it. She did large circles for tree trunks on the rest, needing to do some green trunk and blue sky as well by the end. I loved watching her make it her own. For Shimri’s and Shimei’s trees I used their toes and the balls of their feet to do the leaves and I colored the trunks. I can’t wait to see how they modify what I have in mind as they grow.
One in four pregnancies will end in a miscarriage or still birth. One in four.
. Talking with kids and babies, not just at them, is so important. Shimri and I regularly have conversations, most of them she wins. That girl’s got whit. And Shimei love to tell us all about the humorous side of life. And Iddo is constantly surprising us with her take on the world.
I am an educator and PhD. I quilt, belly dance, run, read, and try to grow things. I am a Mormon. I am infertile. I am a daughter, sister, aunt, grand-daughter, friend, wife, and mom.
Brett L. Dennis
Mama g
Giggles
AmandaStretch
