Looking for a fun and different way for the kiddos to paint and use their creative side? I have got just the thing for you…marble painting!! This has been a lot of fun, maybe more for me than my daughter…I had never seen it done until I was trying to find a way to paint stripes on a zebra for preschool. :-) It is so easy and not too messy, depending on how wild you get rolling the marbles.
Supplies:
- marbles
- paint
- paper
- pan
Place paper in a pan. (I use cheap pans that I bought at the dollar store. Although, it doesn’t really matter if they are cheap or not because if you use washable paint, it will come right off.) Roll marbles in the paint, put them in the pan…..
….then shake the pan to roll them around. Simple, right?
You can make this craft quick by putting all the marbles in at the same time, or stretch it out by doing one marble at a time. It’s also fun to mix colors, which gives you an opportunity to talk about what different colors make if mixed.
What other creative ways have you used to paint, besides the fingers or brush?
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
How fun! We’ve done this before but it’s been a long time, thanks for the reminder!
A fun twist is to use acorns, especially in the fall when my kids collect them by the bucketful!
I bet they make great stamps! Thanks Lauren, we’ll have to try that too!
Oh this used to be a favorite way to paint when I taught prekindergarten. My other one was using hot wheels cars!! Super fun.
Hot wheel cars would be way fun! Too bad I don’t have any of those…I need some boys! I know my girls would love playing/painting with them. I’ll have to get some. Thanks Michelle!
I have never seen this, how fun! I even have some paint….and it is raining….again.
Thanks Aubrey!
How fun Aub. This will keep little ones busy for hours.
I have seen this before but never tried it. We’ll just have to put it on the list for summer activities! We have painted with fruit and vegetables before. We used cut potatoes as a simple stamper, leafy celery stalks (we used both ends), a halved apple with seeds showing, spinach leaves and other stuff that I can’t remember right now. I just let my boys dip the food in paint and use their imagination. The leafy celery stalks were fun because you could dip the leaves and paint with those or use the “half-moon” end and stamp. Spinach leaves were interesting too because they could just paint with it or make an imprint of the spinach leaf. It was a lot of fun to see the outcomes and the way they used the different food. I highly recommend!
Thanks for the idea Jileen! I’ll have to try it!
I think the fingerprint people/animals are darling. I love how cute they turn out.
Love it!
We have a marble company near town…this would be fun to do after going to the marble factory!
We use a see through plastic tuperware (with a lid!!) for our wild little shakers. :) Then there are no worries about flying marbles or flung pans of paint. The big tupperware I put cookies in works well.
:)
Have fun!!!
Great idea Ginger! I didn’t think of that. We went outside just in case, but I love the tupperware idea. Thanks!
Your marble paintings turned out fantastic! I tried this with golf balls recently for our art playgroup, and that was fun too, because of the texture of the golf balls. I’m definitely interested in trying marbles, I was just concerned that some of younger participants (18 mos) might try to put them in their mouths. I’m definitely going to try this with my son sometime soon!
I had a day care for 20 yrs and found every possible way to use paint! As the kids got older we watered the paint down a little and blew it around with straws! What fun! caution…best outside….
Love marble painting. It is great for even 1-2 year olds.
I took my kids to an art day at a local museum featuring designer Todd Oldham. He taught the kiddos how to paint with bubble wrap. It was so fun, and I could hang the finished product in my living room it looked so good!
I like the Jackson Pollock look of these masterpieces!
I haven’t done that in years. I’ll bet my nephew would like that this summer.
I love this! my daughter will flip when I show her….we are going to run out of fridge space to display all her masterpieces!
What a fabulous idea! My kids are going to love this. Thanks a lot. You have a lovely blog here :)
Love this idea and I have a twist in the user category. Going to to this with Long Term Care Patients with minimum motor control. Choosing colours they like, paper shade, and with minimum physical effort we should be able to produce art they are proud of. I think using wall paper samples as the starting paper would be great and classy. Thanks for this idea, I had never thought of it before!
Thanks for the great idea! I posted about my experience today and linked back to you!
http://rubsomedirtblog.com/2012/03/losing-our-marbles
Thanks so much Becky! You have a fabulous blog, so glad to have found it :)
Another cool thing to do is paint in milk. It’s more a fun science experiment than painting, but you get a cup of milk in a shallow dish, and food colouring in red, yellow and blue, put one drop of each around the bowl, then a small squirt of dishwashing liquid.
The dishwashing liquid breaks the tension on top of the milk, and the food colouring dances around and makes a marbly pattern.
Yes, we love that one! We did it a couple years ago. And it would be perfect for St. Patrick’s Day :)
Thanks for sharing Megsb
Sorry, Destri, My fridge is FULL of my granddaughters art (yep, my house is messy, too), but those of you that have more than they can post on a fridge, my outside doors are metal and I use them also to share her art. Of course I have scotch taped many of her pieces on walls, doors, anywhere there is a space, to let her know how proud Gramma is of her. I received her very first hand written (by herself) letter a couple weeks ago and it is framed and on the wall near some pictures of her.
On the painting that this is really about, check into the many ways of making background papers and such in scrapbooking and rubber stamping. Many more ideas there for your youngsters.
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