Toddler Activity: Flyswatter Painting

We love process art! With spring here, as well as the bugs, we had to find a creative way to make a unique piece of art. This time, with a flyswatter and a hyper toddler!

Mila has a love hate with bugs. On one hand, she’s afraid of most of them. Then, on the other, she likes butterflies and the ‘pretty’ bugs. She despises flies and gnats, but was pretty impressed last year when she was introduced to the flyswatter. It’s like she’s on fly patrol whenever she sees one.

To get her creative and being active (which she loves), I thought this activity would be fun for her!

Not only is it fun for Mila to paint and have fun with it, the texture the flyswatter made was amazing to me. It turned out to be a great project.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Canvas or paper
Flyswatter
‘Bugs’ (aka paint)

I love activities that have an easy set up. It works for Mila’s patience level and if I just need a quick activity, it’s so nice. This one was just like that.

The only real planning we did was picking out paint colors. Mila, of course, went for her normal colors: pink, blue, and purple. We had everything else already on hand, but you can find all of these materials almost anywhere.

Then, I just poured little dots of paint all over the canvas. I told Mila to pretend they were bugs and to smack them!

She had so much fun hitting all the different bugs. If I do this activity again, I’ll have her hit the certain colors to practice color matching. It would be fun seeing if she or any toddler would try their best not to hit any other colors too.

The patter the lines on the flyswatter made were perfect. When she asked for more bugs, the layered look was so cute. Somehow, the paints didn’t all muddle together and you could see all the different colors. I was worried they’d just become a huge purple blob!

I think this pattern would end up making great homemade wrapping paper too!

Mila had a ton of fun hitting the canvas and we ended up doing the same activity on a big wood board too.

I hope to finish her painting off with writing a quote on it in the near future. I love to combine her artwork with encouraging words! It just makes for a fun team project that I know we’ll enjoy for years to come.

Let me know in the comments if you like bugs or if you’re on Mila’s side of the flyswatter.

Check out how some other moms incorporated bugs and insects in their learning.