First Art : Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos,   ISBN:9780876592229

Customer Rating: 

This book is really inspiring. It's easy to use, the instructions are clear and the ingredients clearly laid out, so you know just what you need. It includes set up times, including what the grown up should do & what the child can help with.

It comprehensively lists different media for craft activities. I have started collecting all kinds of things to be used in future art projects.

It emphasizes that the process is important, rather than the end project - I like that. I have repeated the same activity a few times as my toddler seemed to enjoy it so much.

My 2 and a half yr old boy has loved the things we've tried from it so far: different kinds of play dough & feely goop, collages, painting with different materials, sand drawing and more. I think we're both excited to try to more activities from this book.

You do need to work out what you need in advance, so for some of the more complicated activities, I try them first myself, and set up during naptime, so we're all ready to have fun when he wakes up.

Customer Rating: 

Most of the "recipes" are rather simple. Lots of focus on exploration of color, color movement, textures, building fine motor skills, etc. No grand works of art will likely emerge from this book, just a book of fun ideas to help little ones explore the simple wonders of the world they live in. Many of the projects call for ingredients that most of us have, such as kitchen and around the house items that many of us have or can borrow from friends. You'll have to buy paints and things like that, but that is part of the fun!

Customer Rating: 

If you are familiar with making art, this book will give you some new ideas and ways to adapt materials and activities for a little one. If you are not familiar with making art, this book will help you get started with clear step-by-step instructions and tips. The activities are very creative and cover a range of developmental skill levels. My toddler and I are having a blast!

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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