Steps by step guide to moving, mark making and painting for babies

I have been exploring moving, mark making and painting online with babies and their adults this week. Here’s a step by step outline of what we did and what we learnt…

1. Paper play

After you’ve safely taped an area of paper down to the floor (needs to bea hard surface for mark making - if you have carpet then use some cardboard underneath) explore the paper - babies may have never seen a canvas like this on the floor before. It feels smooth, makes a sounds when you swoosh over it, pat on it, stamp on it with bare baby feet. You can use the area as an exploration in itself - do babies want to crawl across it, roll on it, slide, or perhaps just sit?

2. Object play

Fill your blank canvas with different coloured objects that inspire you and you baby to move in different ways. Things that spin, wobble, slide, float, roll. Can you do the same? Open ended materials introduced by the adult exploring their possibilities will ignite curiosity and unlock creativity in our babies. Our babies will think of more ways to select, move and manipulate materials that we could very think of. As adults, our job is to model possibilities and then see what happens….

3. Introducing mark making materials

As we did with the object play, introduce the mark making materials in the same way - rolling, sliding, tasting (make sure they’re OK to be mouthed - large enough and taste safe), even dropping them. You might find that you begin to make marks on the paper.

Now you can begin to make marks - don’t forget babies learn through experience and also through observing us - so your own mark making will have a huge impact on their experience of it. Don’t be tempted to ‘draw’ things you recognise - such as a flower. Focus on the feeling of the mark making - what sounds it makes and the emerging lines and shapes on the paper. Your baby may just spend some time watching - this is an important step in their engagement. You can explore moving around the paper with the crayons, creating different rhythms on the paper and mirroring your partner in their mark making.

4. Introduce baby friendly paint

Yoghurt mixed with food colouring is the best paint I have made. The thicker the yoghurt the better the paint. Make sure you’re happy for baby to eat the yoghurt. If baby is pre-weaning - you can do the suggested activities in this section with their feet.

Introduce the yoghurt paint very gently - popping a tiny amount on your finger (or toe if you’re painting with feet) and offering it to your partner. See what their response is. They may be fine to dive straight in to the paint with their hands, some babies may need more time. Explore the different types of moving you can do putting the paint on the paper; rubbing, dabbing, dragging, splatting, rolling your crayons through the paint and then onto the paper. If you’re including painting with feet you can stamp and slide also.

Here’s how my paining emerged - created not only from my own exploration but also from watching the explorations of the babies via the online session…..

Things we learnt:

The canvas is everywhere - just because we as adults believe that the painting happens on the paper doesn’t mean our babies believe the same. Everything can become a canvas - their clothes, skin, faces, the kitchen cupboards. We can treat these new canvases as exploration sites (as long as they’re wipe clean).

Making marks with hands opens up lots of opportunity to different types of marks and explorations that might not emerge if we simply handed our babies a set of crayons. Babies loved being really physical with the materials and progressed naturally from being curious about the object play into being curious with their mark making.

Liz Clark is working with Talent 25, delivering an eight week programme online with families who are signed up to the research.