Kay went to her grandmother's for the morning, and when she came home I had this art activity set up, waiting for her. I took her in the backyard and said, "Do you want to do some painting with...fly swatters?!" She answered in the affirmitive (I kinda knew she would) and ran over to where everything was laid out. She plopped some paint onto the waiting paper plates and got right to work. I showed her once how to do it (partly because I just wanted to try it myself!) but she needed little encouragement. She happily took to slapping the paper and making it splatter everywhere. I suggested, "This would be a good thing to do when you're angry." (Pretending to be angry) "No I don't want to pick up my toys!" She giggled and went with the theme. "No I don't want to take a nap!" Splat!
Then she looked up and asked, "Can I use glitter?" I hesitated, but said "Sure!" and went to find our pink bottle of glitter. Well, once the glitter came out, the swatter was forgotten. She sprinkled the glitter on her paper, then on her arms (I discouraged that!) and on her toes.
She took the rocks that were holding down the paper and rubbed them in the paint and then added glitter to them, too. Then she took the paint bottles themselves and shook them hard onto the paper to make a bigger splat than the swatters would allow. I normally wouldn't want her wasting the paint, but the truth was that these bottles were nearing empty anyway, so I let her keep it up. I loved watching how she experimented with different things, different ways of splattering the paint.
Ewww! Eventually she worked her way over to the bucket of water I had ready to wash her hands. She washed off the orange paint, and wanted to know what would happen if she mixed it with blue paint. So she got blue paint on her hands and rubbed those in the bucket to make...an ucky, disgusting brown.
Then she asked, "Can I dump this on the paper?" My first response? A definitive no. But since she had decorated two sheets, I told her okay, she would pour the water on one to see what would happen. She poured it on, and we watched how the colors blended together, and how the paper got softer and easier to rip.
It was a fun time. I wouldn't normally be so understanding with all the weird - um, unique -things she wanted to try (pour water on the paper? What?!) but I had gotten an especially good night's sleep for a change, so the timing was just right. Lucky for both of us!