Painting Dinosaurs Process Art

Grab the brushes: it’s time to paint dinosaurs.

Things that go together: salt and pepper. Peas and carrots. My toddler and dinosaurs.

She loves her dinosaur collection something fierce, which isn’t surprising. She’s fierce like a dinosaur – they belong together. So it seemed only fitting to let her decorate her true loves with tempera paint. Right?

Yes, I let her paint her toy

You are seeing this right. I let my daughter paint her toys. Don’t worry, I’m not Sid – I’m not letting her de-face, maim, or destroy her toys.

These dinosaurs are plastic so a little washable tempera wasn’t going to hurt them. We’ve painted plastic trucks in the past so I knew this was going to be a-okay.

I definitely wouldn’t let her paint anything wood or fabric. But plastic? Plastic is made for wiping clean. Washable paint included. Obviously do a little paint check test on your toys before trying this.

Getting the dinosaurs ready for their fun.

Materials

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• Washable tempera paint (my favorite)
• Under the bed storage tub
• Plastic dinosaurs – I wish I could tell you where these came from but they are from here and there, collected over the years

I always do messy activities like this inside the safe walls of a storage tub. This gives a clear boundary to the activity and defines the play space. It locks the toddler focus to this one area and keeps things from getting out of hand in my humble opinion.

A roar-ing good time

My kids (ages 3.5 and 27 months) had an absolute blast painting these dinosaurs. And who wouldn’t?!

I may or may not have grabbed a brush from time to time and joined them in their painting adventure. It was too much fun to sit back and just watch. Even mom had to get in on this action.

The exit strategy

One of my biggest tips for painting with toddlers is to always have an exit strategy.

My exit strategy was two fold:

1. I had a wash cloth next to me to clean up hands quick.
2. Dinosaur bath aka the kids and the painted dinosaurs went right into the bath tub. TOGETHER.

And that’s how I made this a 2 for 1 activity

I put both the dirty toddlers and the dirty dinosaurs into the bath tub. I even threw in a few sponges and those kids got their beautiful dinosaurs back to a sparkling clean.

In fact, it was probably even a better clean than before they got painted (I really need to clean my toys more often…).

This whole mess- from toddlers to dinosaurs – was back to clean in just a few minutes.

Painting dinosaurs – it may seem like a wacky activity but trust me, this one had the kids buzzing. They’re already asking to do it again and we just put the paint away. Looks like toddlers and painting dinosaurs goes together like peas and carrots, too.

Will you try painting dinosaurs at your house?