Marble Painting is a favorite amongst the preschool crowd. We did an enclosed version of marble painting around Valentine's Day (with a variety of materials) called Heart Ball Art. A few weeks ago we used some pebbles and paint to do a patriotic version of marble painting.
Doing marble painting is different at every age and stage. It was interesting to see what things my little guy liked this time versus previous times that we've done marble-like painting. Although repeating activities is boring to me sometimes... my son actually likes familiar activities. He can spend more time creating because he already knows what to do!
If you're unfamiliar with this sort of painting, the directions are below. Our Heart Ball Art was a bit tidier than this activity, but this one was fun because it was easier to see the pebbles moving and direct their motion.
Materials Needed: red, white, and blue paint, 13x9 pan, paper, pebbles/marbles
Directions:
1. Stick paper at the bottom of the pan
2. Dip the pebbles/marbles in paint and add a few drops of water to make the paint a little thinner
3. Start shaking your pan!
Marble painting would be an awesome way to create homemade wrapping paper or homemade paper to use for Father's Day cards or other sort of cut paper activities.
Language Building:
This activity can foster conversations about directional words (right, left, up, down, around, etc.) and colors/color mixing. You also talk about the different materials that you use. We like to do this activity with all sorts of round objects, not just pebbles/marbles. You could do it with soft and hard objects too. It is interesting to make predictions of how the art will look when done by a soft objects (like a pom pom) versus a hard object (like a rock).
Happy Painting!
Great idea, thanks!!