Halloween Dropper Art {Fine Motor Fridays}

It’s Fine Motor Friday! Every Friday in October Lalymom, Craftulate, School Time Snippets, Next Comes L, and myself will be posting fun activities that promote development of fine motor skills. So after reading this post you will want to go check out what fun they have posted about!

I’ve wanted to make some “stained glass” art with Caden for some time now. We have tried various methods in the past, but with limited success. This project is done in two parts, and we took several days to complete it. 

So what you need to make your own Halloween dropper art is:

Part One:

• paper towels (I had originally planned to do this project with coffee filters, but they weren’t very absorbent, so I grabbed some paper towels and Caden kept on creating!)
• medicine or eye dropper
• tempra paint (watered down)
• cups to hold the watered down paint
• craft tray to contain the water drops (really its more like squirts and colored water will be everywhere!)

Part Two:

• Orange and black construction paper
• Glue
• Scissors
• Hole Punch
• Clear Tape

To do part one, set up a table with your craft tray, paper towel, watered down paint in cups and droppers. Let me tell you from experience that it is always better to have everything prepared before your toddler gets involved. (I still haven’t learned this lesson!)

Anyway, it’s a really easy  project, show your child(ren) how to squeeze the dropper to fill it up with colored water and let it drip or squirt it onto the paper towel. The squeezing motion using a small medicine dropper is a great way to work those fine motor muscles! For older children, have them try a medicine syringe. Younger toddlers might have an easier time working a turkey baster, using their whole hand.

Caden had a lot of fun with this part! He probably spent a good 30 minutes just filling up the dropper and squirting it onto the paper towel before he started mixing the colors and making a mess.

When you are finished dying the paper towel and making a mess, lay or hang the paper towels to dry. In the next day or two, once the paper towels are dry you can cut it to create a “stained glass” jack-o-lantern, ghost or any other Halloween symbol you can think of.

To make a jack-o-lantern, you or your child can cut shapes out of black construction paper to create a face. I used a hole puncher to cut little black circles for the ghosts’ face. I think Caden would have love to try the hole puncher but I didn’t think to let him until after I had already done it. With the orange construction paper cut out a pumpkin shape with the center cut out. Glue the paper towel over the center cut out, and then let your child(ren) glue on the black shapes to make a jack-o-lantern face. When the glue is dry, tape it up in a bright window and enjoy!

Then Caden glued the little black circles to make a face on the white-ish paper towel. I then cut out a ghostly shape, but an older child can do this themselves. These made really cute and simple ghost “stained glass” Halloween decorations.

Happy Fine Motor Friday!

Go check out these great fine motor ideas from:

Fine Motor Activity Dashboard by Lalymom

Playing with Puzzles by Craftulate

DIY Light Bright Using Styrofoam by Next Comes L

Turkey Baster Pom Pom Race by School Time Snippets

And in case you missed the previous two Fine Motor Friday posts you can check it out here:

Fall Clothespin Tree

and here:

Halloween Threading Activity

For more ways to explore, play and wonder please follow Stir the Wonder on

 Facebook , Twitter, Google + and Pinterest!

Save

© 2013 – 2017, Stir The Wonder. All rights reserved.