Pondering Playtime // Dig Dig Digging Tuff Spot Digger Painting

Welcome back to Pondering Playtime, my fortnightly series where I share a favourite picture book and a craft or play activity to go with it. This week, I’ve chosen Dig Dig Digging by Margaret Mayo, and explored early mark making with M by using the wheels to paint tracks in our tuff spot.

Dig Dig Digging – What’s the Story?

Dig Dig Digging is about all the different vehicles you might find in and around a construction site, what they do, and how hard they work all day. Each page follows the same layout and rhythm.

Dig Dig Digging – Tuff Spot Digger Painting

For this activity, I simply lined the tuff spot with paper (using masking tape to secure it), put some brightly coloured paint in a few plastic plates (we always use yellow ones for our arts and crafts, so that we know never to eat off a yellow plate!), then let M loose with a couple of digger toys.

You will need:

• A paper-lined tuff spot
• Plastic plates
• Poster paints in two or three bright colours
• Some digger toys (but any toy with wheels would work!)

Dig Dig Digging Tuff Spot Digger Painting – What M thought

We have borrowed this book from the library several times, as it’s one that we always enjoy. I like reading it to the girls as it has a lovely repetitive rhythm to it, and M enjoys finishing the end of each page (it’s always the same!).

As for the activity, M was absolutely in her element painting with her diggers. She likes any kind of painting activity, but I don’t think she could quite get over the fact that I was letting her paint her toys! We tried different methods of painting the wheels, as M wanted to use her purple paintbrush (we also tried dipping the wheels in the paint, which made bolder tracks, but we could have done with a larger tray to roll them in) and explored doing big pushes and smaller ones.

I think the fact that I have a lot of blurry photographs in my camera from this activity, is testament to how exciting M found it!

If you enjoyed this, you can find more Pondering Playtime activities here, and you might like to join my Early Years craft and activity Facebook group; Play Craft, Explore. We’d love to have you! And lastly, don’t forget to Pin it!

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