Bubble Prints

A favourite, fun activity to explore colour mixing and print making!

Use an individual straw to blow big bubbles!

When the bubbles are big enough stamp your paper. 

Lift to reveal your print! Repeat with all the bubbles to mix colours too!

Heart Stamping

Contained Finger Painting

Providing opportunities for children to explore materials like paint with their hands/fingers is an important developmental experience. It encourages fine motor strengthening and control, creative expression, and early experiences with mark making. When children are encouraged to make marks with different materials, they develop experience and interest in pre-writing behaviours - realizing that they have the ability to permanently record something tangible that can be observed, discussed, and interpreted by others. This behaviour is an important milestone for children who are learning to write. Early marks will eventually turn into drawings and as children share the 'story' behind each drawing, they will come to understand that these pictures can also be explained in oral and written words. (Schickendanz, J.A. & Collins, M.F. (2013). So much more than the ABCs: The early phases of reading and writing. National Association for the Education of Young Children)

I love to encourage children to draw and finger print in paint but know that many people are reluctant to encourage this due to the extreme messiness that is natural with the activity.  In order to contain the paint and still encourage free exploration, we used our portable water table as the canvas for our work.

Caleb selected some complimentary colours of washable paint (anything else will be much harder to clean) to use in the bin.

At first he was interested in using various painting tools to explore the paint.

I encouraged him to use all the space in the bin, including the inside walls.

Of course any kind of paint with young children will often turn to finger painting and because I wasn't worried about the messiness of this activity, I encouraged him to explore painting his hands with the various brushes.

Even though the paint was repeatedly swirled together, the complimentary colours blended into a beautiful shade of aqua green and was still appealing to use.

The paint was cool and felt so smooth and Caleb spent a long time exploring it.

This activity was fun and so easy to do! An easy way to save any pictures or printing done in the paint is to lightly press a piece of large paper against it and make a print of the work. This way children's experiences can still be saved for classroom display or portfolio use.

When we were done we simply washed the bin out in our tub. Any large water/tactile table would work well for including many children at once. Smaller bins could also be placed together on a table top with many different colour combinations.

Red Sand on the Light Table

We purchased some very neat decorative red sand and put it on the light table this week. It was beautiful!

The children were very eager to explore it, using their hands and fingers to swirl and shape the sand into letters and designs.

The light from the light table illuminated their drawings and printings.

Here's a beautiful spring butterfly!

Lots of printing practice too!

Heart Cookie Cutter Stamping

A fast and easy way to engage children in printmaking is to use cookie cutters dipped in paint.

 

Our children are so creative and drawn to activities that engage them in experiences that appeal to many of the senses.

What was amazing to us when observing the children at this activity was their unique way of exploring the materials. No two pieces of art looked the same.

Some children created prints, then layered paint on top, leaving an original imprint, and then printing again on top. In the following piece you can see the original hearts faint behind the overall red colour. Gorgeous!

One child layered and layered the paint. leaving a very textured look to the paper.

This child printed on the paper and then folded it in half, creating a marbled, symmetrical look.