Doing art "projects" with infants and toddlers are called "parent pleasers". They make the parent happy but they are a crap ton of work and do nothing for the development of the infant.

In my experience, the age of four is when they can do art projects. Simple coloring for short periods is okay and play doh is fun for them for a while. Some cutting and gluing is okay for the three year olds too. It really depends on the age of the child and how much they can work independently without creating a bunch of work for the adult.

I quit doing painting with kids unless it was a very special occasion. It is very time consuming to set up, supervise, clean up, line dry, and hand out to parents. If you have a staff assistant and are paying for it, it is one of the most expensive activities you can have them do.

The good news is that you can do art work with your infant when you get home with your child every night and on the weekends. I have found that babies, toddlers are young preschoolers get a lot out of the experience if they have one to one interaction, direction, and participation with an adult. They don't get anything out of the actual art project but they do get a lot out of the one to one attention they get in the experience and you have the "project" to hang up around the house or give away as gifts to family to remember the times by. If Art is something you value, you can easily do it with your child daily to give them the experience.

My experience is that parents who really push for art to be done with infants and toddlers do it because they want the child to have the experience but they don't want to do the work it takes to set it up, supervise it, and clean it up. They want someone else to do it so they can have the end result to prove the kid did something really fun, to show off the art work, and to get their money's worth in daycare.

My son went to a Head Start program in the early 2000"s and when he began the first semester they had stations set up for all different kinds of activities including painting, sand tables, water tables etc. which the kids could free range and do during free play. When I first saw the set up, all I could think was how in the world did the three staff keep up with the mess and supervise the group.

In the beginning of October, I went back to visit the classroom and everything that was messy was taken down. The painting area was changed to a "stamping" area where they could use stamps and ink pads. The sand table had a half inch of sand and only had cars to run through it. The water table was turned into a fishing game and lined with hookable toys with small thick plastic hand fishing poles with short strings. The coloring table had a very small selection of thick crayons and block paper to cover the table. The stack of puzzles that were within reach were put up on a shelf and dolled out one by one and were ones with few pieces so the clean up would be quick when the kid dumped it and walked away.

The art work he came home with could be deconstructed and I could tell what he did and what the adult did. Often, the only thing he could have possibly done was the gluing of the googly eyes or the coloring over what they had cut out. I watched one of the staff over at a table doing all the pre work of getting everything ready in advance so that all that was left was a few minutes of my kid gluing with a glue stick or coloring.

For the most part, staff just don't want to do art with little kids unless it's something they can sit with them around a table in large groups for a good period of time and require very little on the part of the adult. Play doh without any play doh accessories (knives, rollers etc.) is really popular. Plop a blob of play doh in front of the kids for them to kneed and roll on their own. If it's all the same color then all they can swoop it up and pop it back in the bucket.

Some providers really like art or are required by their state to do art, water, sand, etc. play in order to maintain or reach their level of QRS or whatever program they participate in. They do it because they like it or have to. I prefer to meet their fine motor needs by having a large selection of toys for each age group for them to manipulate.

The best solution is for you to take over your infant's art education. That way you know what they are actually doing as opposed to the adults doing and pawning it off as done by the kid. You will also be able to control the mess because you will be directly supervising just your one child.

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