By Kathryn Peck
It's amazing what you can create with just your fingers and a bit of paint. I spent a rainy afternoon with my kids coming up with fun and creative ideas of things to make with our fingerprints or thumbprints, and here are a few of our favorites.
Fingerprint Alphabet. 26 finger prints, 26 letters of the alphabet. Half the fun was coming up with an object or an animal for each letter!
A – Ant
B – Balloon
C – Caterpillar
D – Dog
E – Elephant
F – Fish
G – Grape
You think of the rest!
Fingerprint Family Tree I painted the tree and my 7-year old added the thumbprint leaves. Together we figured out which family members would be specific leaves. This one’s worth framing!
Bugs My 3-year old is obsessed with bugs right now (we literally have a caterpillar habitat in our house right now), so this theme appealed to him.
Monsters A perfect theme for us since we just watched “Monsters, Inc.” for movie night. And there’s no wrong way to draw a monster!
Flowers Always a fun theme! My daughter used her fingerprints for round petals, but you could do many different flower designs.
Balloons I drew the strings and my little ones liked the task of putting balloon fingerprints on the end of every string. I see a homemade birthday card in our future!
Emotions I loved, loved, loved this theme. I’m always trying to get my children to talk about their feelings opening with me, so this was fun for me, and hopefully for them as well. We made simple yellow emoji-type thumbprint heads and drew different faces with emotions on each. I even used this as a talking point, asking my children to talk about times where they felt these certain ways: happy, sad, scared, angry, sick, worried, crying, laughing, silly, sleeping.
Snowmen I helped make the snowmen shapes while my children decorated and dressed them up.
And Finally ... Make Them Last
Little fingers won’t be little for long, so take this opportunity to make these adorable art projects last a lifetime by using a canvas picture, wood slices for crafts, or even oven-bake clay instead of paper.
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About the author: Kathryn is the owner of Bicycle Pie and mom of 4 little ones. Also a writer, editor, and former owner of one of Boston's premiere baby boutiques, she continues to write about motherhood, children's products, family life, and all other things that test our skills and patience as parents.
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