Handprints and Footprints

Core Idea

Your hands and feet can be art tools! When you press a painted hand or foot onto paper, it leaves a print that is shaped like you. Handprints can become flowers, butterflies, trees, and animals. Footprints can become penguins, rockets, and all sorts of creatures. Best of all, your prints are unique because no one else has hands and feet just like yours.

How It's Best Learned

Use washable paint on paper plates as stamp pads. Show children how to press their hand flat in paint and then onto paper. Demonstrate turning handprints into animals, flowers, and other designs. Make footprint art by stepping on paint then onto large paper. Create keepsake art like handprint cards. Always have a washing station ready nearby.

Common Misconceptions

• Handprint art is only for very young babies; handprint art is enjoyed by children of all ages and even adults.
• The handprint has to be perfect to use it; smudged or partial prints can become interesting art too.
• Handprint art is not creative because you just press your hand down; the creativity comes from what you turn the print into.

Explainer

Handprint and footprint art is a wonderful way to make art using your own body. You press your hand or foot into paint and then press it onto paper. When you lift it up, a perfect print of your hand or foot appears! It is exciting to see your own shape appear on the paper.

Handprints can become almost anything. Turn your handprint sideways and the fingers become the feathers of a peacock. Point the fingers down and add a face, and it becomes an octopus. Overlap several handprints in a circle and you have a beautiful flower. Dip your hand in brown paint, press it on paper with fingers pointing up, and you have a tree trunk with branches. The possibilities are endless!

Footprints are fun too. A footprint can become a penguin, a rocket ship, or a tall building. Walking across a long piece of paper with painted feet makes a trail of prints that looks amazing. It is silly and messy and wonderful, and the art you make is truly one of a kind.

Handprint art is also a special keepsake. Your hands and feet are growing all the time. A handprint you make today shows exactly how big your hand is right now. Many families save handprint art as a memory of how small their children's hands once were. When you make handprint art, you are creating something that will be treasured for years and years!