Have you heard of Children’s Day before? I never have, but a friend shared it last week under the previous name “Boy’s Day” and I was SOLD. I love the current push to teach girls that they can do everything boys can do, but sometime I feel like boys get lost in the shuffle too. We can celebrate both equally and teach them that it’s most important to accept everyone.

Anyway, I did some research and found out that Children’s Day, or Kodomo no Hi, is a National Holiday in Japan! The holiday is a day of celebration in honor of the health, growth, and happiness of children. Traditionally, families with boys will fly large carp streamers. Each family member will have a different color fish and they are flown as kites or banners to celebrate.

I spent some time on Pinterest looking at some ideas, but in the end, decided that a simple fish cut-out was going to be winner for us. And I saw fork-painting a couple weeks ago scrolling through Instagram and kept it in my back pocket for something good. Once I cut the fish out of construction paper, I knew this was perfect time to bust out the forks!

I set out a couple fish on each of Ikea play trays and let each boy pick two complementary colors. I also added a squirt of white paint to use to mix. Then gave them a couple forks and let them go to town.

Pro tip: use painters tape to keep your paper from moving around when kiddos start painting

We talked about the different colors and how they mixed and created new colors. But mostly, I just sat back and let them create however they wanted.

It almost because a full body art exhibit for Everett (19 months), but we managed to keep it reined in. Watching him figure out how to make green out of yellow and blue was completely magical. For both of us.

When they were dry, I glued some googly eyes on them. We talked all about the differences in each one and what colors make up each fish. Now, they are all strung up and hanging in our front window waiting to greet us all week long.

Have you ever tried fork painting? We’d love to see how you’ve played with it! Tag us on Instagram @thebplusmama and give us a follow to see what we’re up to on a day-to-day basis!