Feet Painting For Kids

Foot painting is a gorgeously messy creative sensory activity for toddlers and preschoolers that :

1. Gets kids outdoors to play
2. Boosts essential balancing skills
3. And introduces them to primary colours and colour mixing.

It really does NOT need any prep or assistance so you can sit back in the sun with a cup of tea and relax whilst your kids have fun making art!!

To show you how easy and fun foot painting can be for toddlers and how much young children benefit from it, I'll take you through in this post :

1. Foot Painting Benefits For Kids
2. Super Simple Foot Painting
3. Introducing Colour Mixing
4. More Easy Foot Painting Ideas

Benefits Of Foot Painting For Toddlers & Little Kids

Foot painting lets toddlers have fun outdoors and we should never under estimate the huge benefit of daylight, fresh air and vitamin D for kids behaviour, health and sleep!!

But the specific benefits of foot painting for toddlers are that it :

1. Develops balance
2. Builds body symmetry awareness
3. Gets them crossing the midline.

Learning to toddle is an amazing achievement at coordinating the two sides of our bodies and brains.

Toddlers need lots of opportunities to push that coordination further and foot painting is a great for this.

Long term, better balance and body awareness helps focus and coordination. They are also big mood boosters so we need to build lots of fun balancing activities like foot painting into our toddler's lives.

Simple Foot Painting Activity With Toddlers

Foot Painting Supplies

All you need for a super fun foot painting activity with toddlers and preschoolers is :

• Long strip of paper : rip a few metres off a roll of e.g. lining paper, old wallpaper, brown paper.
• Washable kids paints : you just need 3 primary colours.

Change your toddler into clothes you don't mind getting messy. A swimming costume works well.

A bucket of soapy water and towel are handy for foot washing after.

Foot Painting Setup

Squirt paint onto the paper either in big blobs at one end or in wiggly lines along the length of the paper.

Or squirt colours into plastic tubs or trays toddler feet will fit into.

Foot Painting Fun

Simply let your toddler walk and wander and march up and down through the paint to see the wonderful rainbow of new colours they are somehow creating.

It really is a lovely opportunity to relax and let kids enjoy themselves but find a moment to be wowed by their magical creation of :

• Orange
• Purple
• Green

Extra Foot Painting Activities

Toddlers love repeating stuff, so you can keep coming back to this foot painting activity with by adding :

• Extra fun mark makers
• Colour mixing twists.

Easy Foot Painting Ideas

There are all sorts of simple ways to extend basic foot painting activities with additional mark making fun :

1. Foot Painting In Boots
2. Bubble Wrap Stomp
3. Brush & Mop Painting
4. Plunger Painting
5. Drop Art Painting
6. Mark Making Foot Printing
7. Duck Foot Painting
8. Foot Painting With Dolls
9. Trike Painting

Adding a few of these to your mix will help you keep giving your toddler the benefits of painting outdoors.

Foot Painting In Wellies

Foot painting in wellies or rain boots is great for colder days. Preschoolers adore stomping in rain boots and are fascinated by the grip marks their painty boots make on the paper ...

Bubble Wrap Stomp

For more fabulous mark making fun simply wrap kids feet up in bubble wrap with the bubbles facing down and let them stomp away ...

Brush & Mop Painting

Sweeping and mopping is actually a really wonderful way to help kids calm down - who knew?

And brush & mop painting is a fun way to take foot painting to a whole new level with lovely swishy marks.

Super cool broom painting on a wall is great fun for older kids and a fantastic way to help them burn off energy painting outdoors ...

Plunger Painting

A long plunger or something similar is another super fun addition to foot painting for preschoolers ...

Drop Art Painting

Or sneak some gravity into the mix by filling an old pair of tights or nylons with sand and let children see for themselves the force of it splattering the paint as it drops ...

Mark Making Foot Printing

With just a little preparation you can add shapes to your foot painting by attaching cardboard or foam cut-outs to kids flip flops ...

Duck Foot Painting

Again with very little prep you could cut our cardboard duck feet for your pre-schooler to paint with ...

It's a perfect activity for kids who love I Wish That I Had Duck Feet from Dr Seuss and a great opportunity to chat about the different marks that animals make.

And you can easily adapt the idea for any creatures your kids love e.g. :

• Dinosaurs
• Polar bears
• Cats
• Horses.

Foot Painting With Dolls

If you're at that stage when dolls need to do everything with your child, get them foot painting too!!

Trike Painting

Or if you have a child still bursting with energy after lots of foot paint stomping you can let them add trikes to the mix ...

Colour Mixing With Kids

Foot painting really is a great opportunity for toddlers and little kids to start explore colour mixing.

It lets kids see for themselves :

1. Primary colour combinations
2. Shades and tones
3. Outlines and shadows.

All you need to do is put out different paint and paper combinations :

• Blue & red
• Blue & yellow
• Red & yellow
• Red & white
• Blue & white
• Black
• White on black paper.

Chat about what they see appearing to help them start to recognise different colours and hear colour related vocabulary e.g.

• Purple
• Green
• Orange
• Pink
• Lighter
• Darker
• Shadow
• Outline.

And there you go, lots of lovely simple ways for toddlers and young kids to enjoy the benefits of foot painting.

For more fun activities for kids check out my other posts and follow me on Pinterest :

• Flower Crafts For Kids
• Painting Outside With Kids
• Outdoor Fun With Kids
• Balancing Fun For Kids
• Building Kids Confidence
• Classic Kids Party Games