Sensory Sandpaint Seahorse and Starfish

Today Kingston did a really fun beach themed sensory painting craft utilizing some of the craft sand from yesterday's beach bottle project. 

For this project, I used a small amount of craft sand, orange paint, yellow paint, and white cardstock. I mixed a little sand into each pot of paint, and voila: sandpaint! This is a great textural paint for baby to explore. 

The first painting Kingston made would become his starfish. 

He watched me intently as I poured and mixed the sand. When I spooned the mixture onto his paper, he stared at it questioningly and then dug in!

He was taken aback by the gritty texture. He took a few minutes exploring the texture and moving it around the paper. His facial expressions were adorable!

Then he went wild, smacking the paper and laughing! Here is a silly action shot. His arms were moving so fast, I could hardly capture anything. 

After he finished with this painting, I cleaned him up and taped another piece of cardstock down for his seahorse. We used yellow paint for this one. 

He was an extremely smiley boy while we did this second painting! I got some really adorable pictures of him laughing!

For this second painting, I painted with Kingston. He absolutely loved that I was helping him paint. I took both of his hands in mine and rubbed them. He loved the feeling of the sand being rubbed on his hands. It was like a sugar hand massage! He laughed and kept putting his hands in mine. The sand paint really amps up regular fingerpainting to an entirely new sensory level! 

He intently painted the rest of the paper, and then abruptly decided he was done. He motioned for me to take him out of his high chair, and I took him to the sink to wash him off. This is definitely a messy project!! I basically had to give him a sink bath to get both the paint and sand off of him. That pesky sand finds its way into every look nook and cranny! 

After the paintings dried, I printed a starfish pattern and a seahorse pattern via Google, traced, and cut out each shape. I love how they turned out. The dried texture of the sandpaint was exactly like sandpaper. It was very cool. The colors of the sea creatures turned out very nice too, soft and pastel.