It took a while for my four-year-old, but Travis is just now learning to color in the lines instead of scribbling willy-nilly, and he’s so proud. Since we’ve also been learning lots about the body lately, I thought this clever little activity would combine the two nicely – some anatomy about the hand, as well as a chance to hone those coloring skills.

I printed a hand template rather than attempting to draw one from scratch, and cut out about 5 or 6 hands for him, drawing fingernails onto each.

You can have a quick chat about nails before the coloring begins, too, like how our nails never stop growing or other fun factoids.

Now for the artsy part; the challenge was to “polish” each nail, staying as near to the lines as he could.

Travis was up to the task! He loved picking a color for each hand, like gray or pink or blue.

And then of course because glitter glue makes everything more fun, we decided to add glitter glue jewelry to some of the hands.

And since Travis likes to get impish these days, some of our salon patrons soon found themselves covered in “goop.”

Big kids might want to get really artistic with their nail designs! You can stick to markers, or, let them use real polish. For one special hand, I traced the hand shape onto thick cardstock and let him actually swipe on a coat of polish.

Cute and fun, of a quiet morning!