When the children are looking for something new to do with paint, we relish the challenge to come up with something a little bit different.

Here we gave the children some clear bottles and squirty paint.

They added squirts of different coloured paints to the insides of the bottles.

Naturally they chose to add several different colours.

Next they rolled and shook and tipped and rolled …

until the paint whizzed all around it.

You don’t want the paint to be too thick or it doesn’t go anywhere. We needed to water ours down a little.

It’s a good idea to pop a bit of tape over the end of the bottle as the children are bound to tip it upside down so the paint can run down the sides!

It is sort of messy play without the mess!

Don’t they look great?

We have blogged over 600 posts in the last 2 years, have around 40,000 unique visitors to our page each month and are on our way to reaching 10,000 followers on our Facebook page.

UN-BE-LIEVABLE … Thank you!!!

As our followers increase, and with term 3 holidays upon us here in Victoria we thought it was time to take another trip down memory lane and revisit some of our old posts from the past … Ones you might have missed back then.

This Flyswatter painting activity was one we picked up from one of our dearest blogging buddies Teacher Tom! Our children took this one outside and boy did they love it!

You can view the full post right here.

We have written about still life art experiences before and each time the children experimented with it, their artworks were very different and unique. It’s so interesting to look at objects through the eyes of a child.

With our own children they experimented with different mediums like oil pastels …

and charcoal.

While we were at Highvale Preschool recently the children were also experimenting with still life art – using paint. Their models were these very brightly coloured puppets and the children were supplied with paint in the same colours.

The resulting artworks were truly beautiful!

Just check out those colours!!

The staff noticed that several children, who up until now had not painted a recognisable figure before …

had indeed come up with some of the most spectaclar paintings …

clearly inspired by the visual assistance of a model.

We pulled out and reread a favourite book, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” …

written by the amazing Eric Carle, who will celebrate his 82nd birthday this Friday.

Kate over at An Amazing Child is heading the charge to celebrate all week, this talented writer and artist’s birthday, so naturally we wanted to be involved too.

After reading the story we asked the children what we could do to celebrate this great man.

They decided, as it was his birthday, we should make him a present … well naturally! They had a hunt through our art supplies and decided that a mosaic butterfly would be good as they loved the beautiful butterfly in the book.

So while the children sourced what they thought would make for good mosaic pieces …

and we pulled out the paints and a large board we had picked up from Resource Rescue.

We thought an interesting and fun way for the children to apply the paint would be with cardboard rollers, an idea we picked from Maria over at her wonderful and inspiring blog Casa Maria’s Creative Learning Zone.

First they painted the big board with bright colours, which was laced with PVA glue …

using the cylinders to roll the paint all around.

A beautiful work of art in itself!

Not surprisingly this quickly became fingers and hands …

and with the addition of some stick scratching …

it resulted in a really pleasing texture.

The body was a tricky problem until someone found a zipper – perfect! Body and antennae in one.

Then they chose heaps of circular objects …

of differing diameters and heights …

to be the patterns on the wings.

He definitely was a beeea-uuuu-tiful butterfly!

This post has been linked to the Eric Carle birthday celebrations over at An Amazing Child!

Be sure to pop on over and see how others are celebrating this great man this week!

This post has also been added to another Eric Carle celebration

taking place over at the blog Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas !

When we visited Croydon West Primary School, Ruth Bode, the Art and Sustainability teacher, showed us the most delightful fairy garden the Prep and Year 1 children were creating.

Ruth got the ball rolling with some clay fairy doors she had made a while ago and rediscovered, painted them and placed them under some spreading tree ferns in the school’s garden.

The children were SO delighted to discover them one morning and wanted to make it look beautiful in the hope that fairies would move in.

They added all sorts of natural bits and pieces they found around the yard.

All child directed and all totally irresistible!

To make it a great literacy activity, Ruth (shhhh don’t tell any children) wrote a tiny weeny letter from the fairies to the children and popped it into a teeny tiny leather satchel. She placed it into the garden for the children to find. This is what it said.

Apparently the children immediately wrote back to the fairies, by hand, on little wee pieces of paper.

Ruth said the children very carefully placed the satchel and its contents back into the fairy garden for other children to find and enjoy – how thoughtful and respectful.

There are different methods of doing marbling, a particular favourite using turpentine. We thought it would be good to find a way of marbling without using turps as is certainly isn’t child friendly!

We picked this idea up from Google and thought we’d give it a go. The children poured some liquid starch into one flat container and water into the other.

Then they dobbed some paint into the starch …

and stirred it gently around.

Next they placed some firm card onto the starchy paint …

then into the water to wash it off. Hmmmm … It’s interesting but we’re not sure that it looks too much like marbling so back to Google for us!

It is such fun making our own paints and we have done this in the past.

This time the children mixed equal quantities of water …

flour …

and salt …

in a bowl.

It was quite a thick mixture.

They were keen to add some colour …

then spooned it into sqeeze bottles.

What great exercise for their hands squeezing and squeezing that paint onto some firm card.

After they had made wiggly lines all over the place …

they decided to use paint brushes to spread it around a bit.

It wasn’t glamorous, but was thick and textured and dried hard with a sheen to it.

Very interesting!

The children had a go at snap painting a little while back …

using a big, firm base and large elastic bands.

As we were preparing for our workshop on messy play we thought that the adult participants might like to have a go too. Rather than using just the one frame, which is then used by everyone, we decided to go mini sized!

We discovered some small strong boxes at Resource Rescue and firm white card which fitted into them perfectly.

We fitted some very flexible small elastic bands over the top, painted them and …

SNAP!

WOW! they were very effective, in fact we felt they worked better than the bigger elastic bands which didn’t have quite so much give.

Just watch out for that SNAP. It’s got a real SPLAT to it!

This post is part of the great Cardboard Box Challenge being run by Rachelle over at Tinkerlab. Be sure to check out what others are doing with cardboard boxes this week!

This post has been added to The Art Fairly’s Weekly Top Twenty. Be sure to click on over for some more great art ideas.

A little while ago we read this terrific post by Scott Wiley over at his wonderful blog Brick by Brick. It was about marble painting inside a tube.

Over the holidays Donna did something similar with her nieces and nephew except, instead of using cardboard tubes the children found an old jug in the cupboard and as it had a sealed lid it was ideal.

The children chose their own paint colour combinations and popped them into some bowls.

Next they added the golf  balls …

and coated them in paint.

A piece of paper was rolled up and placed inside the jug …

and the golfballs were dropped in.

On went the lid …

and the jug was spun like crazy!

It took a little practice to get the golf ball running around the inside of the jug but once the children got the hang of it there was no stopping them!

This was a great opportunity to talk about how the patterns were created by centrifugal force …

Great science!

Great colour mixing!

Great fun!

In kindergarten, it’s not unusual for parents to wonder how teachers are ‘teaching’ 4 and 5 year old children literacy when they are not yet reading and writing.

Studies show that children begin to develop their early language and literacy skills from a very young age – well before the age of kindergarten – well before they learn to write their name.

Every time they listen to you read them a story.

Each time they look at picture book …

or discuss images with their friends.

Each time they turn a page …

or pick up a paint brush …

or make marks on some paper …

our children are developing language and literacy skills.

These interactions are many and varied.

So in beautiful weather like we are currently experiencing, grab some pavement chalk and “Get outdoors; It’s time to play” …

and draw …

and write …

and make interesting patterns …

all over the concrete …

and allow and encourage your children to work play on developing their literacy skills!

This post is linked to the – Get Outdoors Month over at Childhood 101!