Marble Painting - Painting without Paintbrushes!
Marbles and paint. What a great combination! If you have never tried this, watch the video below to see the awesome effects that this combination produces. Marble painting is more than putting paint on marbles and rolling them around on paper. Let’s take a closer look - click the image below to play the video.
To make this work, the marbles should be well covered in paint. We chose to put marbles in yoghurt containers. Picking up marbles and dropping them into a container is great for fine motor development if each marble is done one at a time. Once that is done, the paint needs to be added.
The skill of pouring is a life skill so if possible let your child help with the pouring of the paint. To cover the marbles with the paint, we shook the containers. Think about the hand movements when shaking the container. It has to be done just right. Too soft and the marbles won’t move around in the paint and too hard might make the marbles “leap”out of the containers. Learning to get it just right means giving it a go and working out the best way to shake the marbles successfully. That requires thinking about it and then putting the thoughts into action.
The method of using the spoon to spread the paint is stirring. Again, this has to be done just right to get the paint on the marbles. Eye-hand coordination is developed with both methods of shaking and stirring to spread the paint. When you use your eyes to see which marbles are not covered in paint, you have to problem solve to work out how to get the marbles covered in paint. You have to watch carefully to see if you have the desired effect and then make changes if it’s not working the way you want it to.
Time to put the marbles on the paper. We decided to use a spoon, again focussing on this life skill. We transferred the marbles from the containers to the paper or tray carefully. When kids do this activity, they learn to be decision makers by placing each marble in a place that they have specifically chosen. More skills follow to get the painting done!
Moving the tray carefully from side to side without spilling the marbles is tricky. Kids have to watch the marbles to make sure they stay on the tray. They also have to manipulate the tray to get the marbles to roll in the direction they want them to. Very complicated but what wonderful thinking! Of course there is trial and error happening during the process. For example, a thought might be “If I move the tray like this, I hope the marbles move that way. If they don't, how do I make them roll the way I want them to roll?”
Rolling the marbles on the tray
We explored something we hadn’t done before. We wondered what would happen if we did marble painting directly on the tray. It was a different experience for us! We discovered that the marbles were easier to move on the tray. We were able to use our creativity with the shaking of the tray for different effects and we were also able to manipulate the marbles so that they rolled around the edge of the tray. Then we wondered what would change if we pressed paper onto the tray to make another painting. Watch the video to see what happens!
Exploring different ideas like we did should be encouraged at every opportunity. We played with paint and marbles when making this video and it was fun. Did we learn something new? Yes! Was it satisfying? Sure was! That’s what it’s all about!
