Toddler Art Class: Stamping Dots!

Polka dots or poke-a-dots?

Art Project: Stamping dots
Supplies:
stamp pads (washable ink recommended!)
unsharpened pencils with erasers
paper
wet wipes (or a sink in your classroom)
marker caps (optional, but fun!)

Book:
   Press here / Tullet, Herve

Music to make art by: 
  Wiggleworms love you [sound recording] /

 What Kids Do:
--some kids pressed the pencil erasers into the stamp pads and then carefully printed dots on their page.

 Other kids tried drawing with the inky erasers

 We also tried printing circle dots with marker caps

 Or with a bundle of pencils!

 or... just drumming with our pencils was fun too (Toddler Art doesn't have to be all about VISUAL art, after all!)

 We also tried rolling the marker caps on their sides

 And then there was this...

 Or just bypass the stamp altogether and get the ink on the page directly!

 But the most popular stamping tool of the day was... fingers!

 This was a very interesting result:  After a child had held one of the marker caps in her hand long enough that it made an impression in her palm, she made a handprint and look what happened!

Hindsight Tip: 
-- This was one of those projects that some kids were done with very quickly (especially those who don't like messy hands) and others played with a bit longer.  Set-up and clean-up were surprisingly simple and
everyone seemed to really enjoy this project!
--There was a lot of double-tapping between the two colors.  Luckily, the colors I'd picked were fairly analogous, so if they got a bit mixed during the process it wasn't a big deal.  I'd avoid using complimentary or contrasting colors unless you want to have different colored stamp pads (brown!) than what you started with.
--I also happened to only have 5 giant stamp pads (and one regular sized stamp pad) so kids had to share, two pads to a table.  If possible, this might work better with enough stamp pads for each kid to have their own.  And to really simplify things, choose only one color.  But where's the fun in that?

 Variations to try: 

--Bring in the Ed Emberley fingerprint drawing books for inspiration.
--There are several really great books about dots (The Dot by Peter Reynolds, Lots of Dots by Craig Frazier, etc.) but I do love reading Press Here to a group of kids.  It's so entertaining!

Adult Challenge:  Follow your kids' lead.