Holiday Handprints

Where I work, we do not celebrate holidays—which makes sense, don't get me wrong—but I chose to do these handprints anyways. I broke the rules for "no holidays," but I also passed it off as a sensory activity. When you work with children, they don't care whether it's holiday paintings, squiggly paintings, names, etc. All they care about is the process, how much fun it is, getting to show it off, making a mess, and actually doing something!

I found these fun and exciting "Frankenstein handprints" on Pinterest. I was trying to look for something I knew my two- to three-year-olds would enjoy doing, especially on a cold day. I just happened to come across this and two other fantastic ideas (spiders out of paper plates and footprint ghosts). We did the spiders along with the Frankenstein handprints; same day, same kiddos, same holiday.

If you ever have worked with children, you would know how hard it is to keep them still for such a long time period (nearly impossible with two- to three-year-olds). I had about 14 in the classroom the day I decided we should make them (which requires two teachers; the ratio is one teacher to eight children). So, instead of taking 14 children and sitting them all down, trying to get them to all listen, keeping the paper on the table, keeping the paint off of our friends, and so on, we decided to split the class in half. Half of our class went outside while the other half of our class did the activity.

So, I sit down my seven kids that were extremely excited to work with paint (we don't get to work with paint often!). We are all quiet with a piece of paper in front of each of us, and I walked through how we were going to be making something fun! And, of course, we say everything over-enthusiastic and exciting, so it went something along the lines of:

Me: How many of us like to paint!?

2-3-year-olds: MEEEEE *top of the lungs*

Me: Me too! Do we like SPIDERS!?

2-3 yr: EWW / YESS / *most random screams and awkward noises*

Me: OK, OK! Then lets make some! First, we are going to make our Frankensteins. BUT! Miss Kayla likes when we wait quietly and when we use our listening ears, Right!?

2-3 yr: Yeah! *Sits quietly*

Me: Awesome! So what we are going to do is... I'm going to go around the room and put paint on your hand! Oooooh! So, watch how Timmy does it! (I don't have a child named Timmy in my class, but I am going to use Timmy for confidentiality purposes.)

So, I am putting on some green paint on Timmy's palm and some brown on the fingers (we didn't have any black at the moment). We smooshed our hand on our paper two times (more fun done twice!) and put it on the drying rack and washed our hands.

Now the trick is, our kiddos know how to wash their hands on their own. So when a child was done, I had them wash their hands and sit down again while I worked with the next child. You're probably thinking, how in the world did I get seven kiddos to sit patiently before and after using the paints? Well, I had paper plates out ready to go! Remember, the paper plates were going to be our spiders! None of the children had any troubles waiting before getting to use the paints because they knew they had to wait patiently to be able to use the paints. But after washing their hands was a whole new ball game.

After washing their hands (while I'm still working with another child), I instructed the one that just got done to grab a paper plate from the table. They got to color the paper plate while I finished all the other kids.

Here's the fun part! As you probably already know, each child reacts differently to how something feels. So, I'm going to tell you a few kids that made me absolutely laugh by their reactions.

One little girl, lets call her Sara, thought it was cold and it had surprised her. Well, earlier that week she learned how to make the funniest 'surprise' face. She makes an "O" shape with her mouth, raises her eye brows, and puts her hands to her cheeks. Well, instantly when I get the paint on her hands, she decided to make her surprise face. And, of course! The paint makes its way to her cheek!

Another kiddo didn't know exactly how to feel about the paint touching her hand. She was making "uhhh" noises and making some crazy "What are you doing to my hand?!" faces at me, which is always funny!

But one of my favorites is when a boy that barely ever talks did his! He didn't seem that interested in the idea of having paint on his hand. But I got him to go along with it anyways! I tried being as upbeat and positive as I could with it. We pushed his hand down and counted, "1... 2... 3... LIFT!" Instantly he looks up at me, his face lit up, and he yells, "I did it!"

Some of the simplest tasks have to be SO planned out when it comes to two- to three-year-olds. But after putting in all that work, it pays off!