Dot Art

Have you seen these Do-A-Dot Markers yet?  I love using them with younger children.  They are perfect for preschoolers working on hand/eye coordination and a great way to allow your kids to paint in a relatively neat manner.  Ok, a determined child can still make a mess with them and any child can use them to paint on themselves but you are less likely to end up with paint on the floor or the walls.

 I love to look for printable activities designed specifically to be used with these markers.  I have a set of print-outs that Gabe is working his way through for kindergarten that help introduce all of the letters and numbers (yes, we go a little slower here now than we used to so kindergarten is more like it was when we were in school rather than an academic thing).  While searching for those, I also stumbled upon a few options for just fun pictures.

I printed out some fall dot pictures from this website.  Wonderful fall themed shapes.  I was able to print both pictures with just a few dots for Robert and Ellie and pictures with a ton of them for Gabe and Abby.  Ellie still has no real clue about putting the dots in the circles on the paper but she did a great job painting her arms.  Robert got the idea behind filling in the circles but wanted nothing to do with using the suggested colors. He went for a more abstract look.  Apparently apples are meant to be blue.  The older two both did a great job of following the directions.  I'm hoping I will stay on the ball and continue to print out activities of this sort this year for the younger ones because the 10 minutes of quiet concentration helps the older ones have a bit more quiet time to do their work.