Managing painting

How do you manage painting with very young toddlers? Do you confine them to a highchair and then take the paint/paintbrush away from them the minute they start to paint everything within touching distance?

What about when you have them standing at a little table and one of them wanders off covered in paint? Then you chase them and the other two are waving their wet paintings around behind you?

There's not much point to this post really, lol, because I'm sure we are all winging it at times and you just have to laugh at the chaos that sometimes just happens. I know we're all pretty good at thinking on our feet, but I wondered if there are any fool proof tips?

My top tip, no matter how many children, is to have everything ready beforehand.

Before the painting even starts I'm prepared with the aprons, floor mat, wipes, bowl of water, towel and kitchen roll. I make sure I have everything to hand so I don't need to move away from them.

For toddlers, there's one brush in each pot of paint and just a small amount of paint - I top it up as I need to. For the youngest ones, I give them one pot of paint each and swap them round so they get to use different colours. Once they're more capable, the pots of paint are in the middle of the table. I tend to have them standing at the table to paint.

To be honest, none of them run off. They get to know the rules pretty quickly and know that they have to stay standing at the table. If they're really young and I don't think they're ready to stand at the table, I put them in a highchair, but that's not very often. Sometimes I stick the paper to the table with masking tape. That way, they can't move it, never mind wave it around or run off with it.

To clean them up, I do them one at a time. I take the brush and paint away from the first one, wash their hands in the bowl of water, dry them and send then child to sit down with a book. Then onto the next one. Once they're all looking at books, I clear the table and pack everything away.

Wow Mouse, some great tips!

When I was childminding first time around, I seemed to have most things running smoothly, but now, not at all. You forget how many mini routines you have/had for every single part of the day.

Always in highchairs, pushed up to the big table aqnd working on a plastic sheet on the table.
For really little ones, painting on a plain glass chopping board is easier (as they do not know how to hold down the paper). Or on a sheet of card.
Sometimes with little ones we dollop the paint straight onto the paper and they work with that, when dipping brushes in pots is too difficult.
Always very large paper (A2 ideally). And painting outdoors whenever we can!

For tinies get paint sticks from the works, excellent.