Potato printing is a great art and craft activity for all ages to enjoy. The end result is effective and potato printing has lots of learning and development opportunities. Potato printing can be a fun arts and craft activity or can promote fine motor skill development and maths shape and colour recognition as well as supporting a classroom theme such as the Supertato story books.
To prepare for this activity I cut potato's into different shapes. To do this I carefully used a shape knife when there was no children present. I chose to cut some shapes into the potato to get an outline when the children printed them, where as for others I cut the shapes out of the potato to get a clear shape print. Alternatively you could also use cookie cutters to make the shape then carve around it to make your potato print more accurate. I stored the potato prints in an air tight container over night to minimise browning because I wanted to use them the next day, I put kitchen roll into the container to absorb any liquid consequently drying out the potato's and helping them to hold the paint better the next day.
To support children's fine motor skills I cut little handles into the top of each potato print. This helped the children to grip the potato's better, control where they wanted to print the shape as well as promoting using the pincer grip, improving hand eye coordination and dexterity.
I cut different shapes into the potato's such as; stars, hearts, crosses, rectangles, circles, triangles and zig zag lines. This supported the children's maths learning and development, in particular shape recognition. When I carried out this activity I arrange the potato prints on the table face down to encourage the children to use the handle and pick them up, as the children did this I challenged them to name the shape on the potato. This developed into a guessing a game as the children tried to predict which shape potato they were going to pick up next.
The over all out come of the potato printing activity was very effective. I put out yellow, green, blue and red paint on paper plates so that the children could easily dip the potato prints in. This also provided an opportunity for maths learning and development as I asked the children to name the colours of the paint. Once the children's potato printing pictures were complete we looked at them and named a few of the colours and shapes as well as counting how many stars or circle for example we could see on the painting to reinforce maths counting and shape and colour recognition.
As the activity evolved, to link to the children's favourite story Supertato I challenged them to use the potato prints to paint their own Supertato which was great fun to see the different interpretations. However, towards the end of the activity the paint got mixed and the children began to the potato prints as a paint brush which was not planned but provided an excellent opportunity to explore colour mixing and support maths learning and development further.
To use the potato printing activity for a purpose you could turn the creations into birthday, Christmas or thank you cards or alternative complete this activity on a large roll of paper and make your own personalised wrapping paper.
I hope you enjoy this potato printing activity!
I would love to see your potato printing pictures on Instagram
Or save this idea for later on my Pinterest
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