It’s been a good and hectic couple of months for us here at Artventuretales, as you probably guessed from the quiet around here. Or maybe not :). We were off to a 28 day adventure at Singapore, which I will write about in a separate post or you can read all about it on my instagram account @artventuretales. Once we were back the school grind began and although we still did our activities I never got a chance to document it.

With the little one growing up and showing signs of becoming extremely independent (and how! This morning he cried because the elder one had a casual day at school so when he got dressed up the little was upset that we weren’t getting him ready to go out!!) I’m having to think up ideas and activities for him to do alongside my 5 yo.

So this is an age old indian print method using bhindi / ladies finger / okra / vendakkai that the kids absolutely loved. Materials you will need include:

The ladies finger stems – you can use the whole bunch, 1 for each colour

Tray of paints – I used water colour for this

Toothpicks / pegs – to hold the bhindi stems

Layout a sheet of paper, I’ve started taping mine so it doesn’t move and the kids have more fun around the colouring. Provide the paints in a tray, keep the bhindi stems around and let them get to work. I did print some initially to show him what the expectation was and he quickly picked up on it.

What started as printing slowly moved on to colour mixing (as I used a lot of primary colours, and the 5 year old was involved) and colour block printing as he used the okra stems as a paint brush which surprisingly wasn’t too bad.

Going by his grasp of the toothpick, his control of the stem for printing and moving it on the paper, the littles fine motor skills are being put to good use. His pincer grasp got an extra workout with all that toothpick holding and I got some much needed downtime while they explored. I have used potato and sweet potato for this before in addition to Okra so go ahead and get creative.

I will include your ideas in this if you have a different vegetable your kids have had fun with.