First Art Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos

First Art Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos

Art can be fun and easy, rewarding and a wonderful learning experience. Toddlers and Twos discover their world as they explore the 75 fun filled art activities. This resource book starts young children on a journey of exploration and creativity.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Good ideas, recipes not always right-on though
I got this book for all of the obvious reasons. I haven’t had a problem finding and buying ingredients, but where I have had problems is with the mixtures. For instance, “The Need to Squeeze” called for 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 cup of water which you mix together then put in a squeeze bottle for the kids to squeeze out. My kids would like to squeeze all the glue out of the glue bottle (as the author notes) so I thought this would be perfect for them. The author also encourages the parent to let the kids be present for the mixing of the ingredients. So that’s what I did. What I ended up with was a dough that was REALLY hard to squeeze out of a squeeze bottle (not a glue bottle with a tiny hole, either). It was hard for ME to squeeze out, let alone my 2 year old. This was a fairly easy fix as I just had to figure out what was wrong and add more and more water (somewhere between 1.5 cups to 2 cups) to make the dough more similar in consistently to glue than playdough (as it started out). Then my 2 year old was able to squeeze it out to her heart’s content.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only example of inaccurate mixing ratios or time expectations. For instance, my experience with plaster of paris is that it takes closer to 10 minutes to harden than 2 minutes - and even I got bored with “Sculpture in a Bag” before then, and I like to think my attention span is a bit longer than my 2 year old’s. I won’t even dwell on the flimsy sandwich bags (recommended by the author) that broke or the “sculpture” that fell apart when trying to remove it.

I’ve had to make several correcting notes in the book. I’m finally understanding that I need to practice new activities before I start them with my toddler. Set up is often a significant part of the activity, and when you’re encouraging your toddler to help you so that you can do something fun, and then you have to start over because it didn’t turn out right, and it takes twice as long to get to the “start,” my toddler’s attention span has been spent. Yes, yes, I realize that we got to do something together - playing with the ingredients - but I’d like the art part of it to play out too.

I thought about giving this book 3 starts because of the issues I’ve had doing the projects, but I’m giving it four anyway because it does have a lot of ideas that I wouldn’t have thought up on my own, and now that I know I have to do a test run before actually trying the things (those that require mixing and creating the medium, anyway) I expect to get a lot of use out of it.

4 Stars First Art
Great resource for the youngest artists. Toddlers and young preschoolers. Full of ideas and medias for parents and preschool or day care teachers alike.

5 Stars Lots of Great Ideas!
My daughter got this book from Grandma for her 2nd birthday. She had been attending an art class but we had to quit due to time constraints. This book definitely filled the void. Whenever we are looking for something fun to do, we yank this book off the shelf! It’s full of great ideas!

5 Stars Great learning experiences for toddlers
I bought this book after doing some research over the internet to see which activity book would be best for my toddler. I was very satisfied with the variety of activities in the book and my daughter has really enjoyed them so far.

5 Stars Fun Preschool art projects
I use this book often to help with open-ended art activities in the preschool classroom. There are lots of great ideas!

Buy/More Info