Saturday, May 31, 2008

Marble Painting

I've been wanting to do this for a while. Shortly after waking up this morning A announced he wanted to do an "art project with paint". Then I remembered next week's theme was "paint" over on Unplug You Kids. It was the perfect opportunity.

We used an old plastic ice cream tub, but it works just as well with a shoe box or any kind of box with a lid. Then we placed a piece of paper in the box, added some dabs of paint and dropped in the marble. We slowly rolled it around with the lid off to see what was happening. Then we put the lid on and shook it faster. We made five pictures, each with a different combination of colors (red, yellow, blue, white, black). A's favorite was the one with all five colors. Oh, and the all blue one is mine....what can I say? I wanted to get in on the fun too!

I tried to make purple for him, but it came out too watery. I grabbed a straw and let him blow it around in the box to make a different abstract design. He concentrated very hard on this, but in the end preferred the marble approach.
Considering the mess was negligible and the fun was substantial, we are going to pull out this activity again soon. And I'm so glad it gave me an opportunity to finally contribute to Unplugged!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love doing this! Another great spur of the moment activity to keep in mind.

Anonymous said...

Your marble art turned out great! I have only done it in a cardboard tray. I like the idea of using something with a lid for all that crazy shaking! :)

Julie said...

I also have a high energy BOY...and we did the crazy shaking with marbles. Very fun. http://funmajors.blogspot.com/2008/04/art-class.html

Anonymous said...

We used to do this often when my kids were younger. This was always a hit!

Anonymous said...

This looks like fun. We have not tried marble painting yet, but it is on my list. Thanks for joining in the Unplugged Project this week. Welcome!

reprehriestless warillever said...

This is why I love the Unplugged posts. This is another painting method we need to try!

Gottfredsen said...

Oh I love the marble painting. My high energy boy loves it to. His favorite is with match box cars.

Michie said...

I've done marble painting at school with my students, but haven't brought it home for my daughter yet. Another fun one to try that is similar to the marbles is to use jingle bells. Then you get some music too!

Anonymous said...

I've heard of marble painting before, but not in a box, what a great idea to contain the paint!

GeonHui's Bakery said...

What a great idea! I'm making not of this.

Anonymous said...

What a great project! Now that I've read this, I remember doing it as a kid. Isn't the Internet great? :)