Swimming Pool Ball Painting & Feet Painting

Swimming / Wading Pool Ball Painting

My final post for this weeks lessons is all about COLLABORATION.  This week we worked together as a group for the whole lesson with no set seats and we all waited until everyone was finished on each activity before moving on to the next one.  I thought it was important to have collaborative activities early on so we could bond as a group and feel comfortable about sharing each others creative spaces.  Collaborative projects promote both the strength of the group and the strength of the individual.  I hope to do a Circle Painting with the group later this year.

Swimming Pool Ball Painting

Some of you may have done marble painting with your children at home or they may have done it at kinder.  Its loads of fun loading up some marbles with paint, putting them into a tray with paper in it and then tipping the tray so they roll around.  Click here for the Artful Parent post on it if you want to try it some time.

Swimming Ball painting is much the same thing yet on a much larger scale.  I haven't got around to getting The Artful Parent book (its had great reviews) however I did see Swimming Pool Painting as an activity header and dug through the Artful Parent Blog archives to find the post on it.

Materials:

• Some sort of wading pool (I used our old clam shell one that we got on hard rubbish yet any wading pool would do even a blow up one I expect.  The paint washes off easily so don't worry it won't be wrecked at the end of it).
• Tempura / Poster Paints (I used the ones left over from our Splatter Painting activity)
• Balls of various sizes (golf, ping pong, tennis, cricket etc)
• A large piece of paper

How To:

Tape your large piece of paper into the inside of the swimming pool.  Then get all the children to dip a ball into the paint (I had the same number of balls and paint pots as children, not necessary yet it helped as they all wanted their own balls).  Then they all gathered around the pool, dropped the balls into the swimming pool and then held edges of the swimming pool and tipped it from side to side.  The balls rolled around inside making pretty marks on the paper with the paint.  The group worked really well together as a team and it was lots of fun seeing the balls roll around and deciding as a group what colours we needed more of and deciding when to stop so it didn't end up as a muddy brown mess.

Here's the results:

Tuesday Class Swimming Pool Painting

Thursday Class Swimming Pool Painting

Feet Painting

Feet Painting was our last activity of this very busy outdoors class.  I included it as its a great fun sensory experience to feel paint oozing between your toes.  I bought a roll of brown paper put it down our driveway on top of drop sheets and then the children walked up and down the sheet after standing in a tray of paint.  On Thursday we added some individual prints as well as my children requested it.  The end results are a bit messy yet it was still fun.  I don't have any photos of the actual process - I think I was too paranoid about someone walking on our cream pavers to concentrate on photos too!

Feet Painting

Finally our artist of the week was Paul Cezzane - just because!

There will be a Sunnyside Art House Open Studio / Adults Get Arty Session THIS FRIDAY (26 April) from 9.15am. This is a great chance to get in touch with your creative side.  No artistic experience required just a desire to create! Address is 33 Sunnyside Grove, Bentleigh, Victoria, Australia.  All Welcome.  Gold Coin Donation.

Cheers

Fiona