Marble Painting

We had our first Educational Play Date today.  (Bekah, I think we need to come up with a more FUN name for these dates)

We decided to try marble painting first.  I went searching for marbles this week, since I don’t own any.  Did you know that you can’t find marbles very easily?  I ended up with some round decorative ‘gems’.  They worked and they were very cheap.  I also bought paint.  I found some Tempera Paint and figured that’s what most elementary art teachers use, so I should be good with that.

Before giving them paint, we decided to show them how the whole marble painting thing worked.  We gave them a marble and showed them how to move the box around to make the marble move back and forth.  That also gave us a chance to see that we needed to tape down the paper.  It was a good dry run for everyone.

Then the pretty paint came out.  The boys kept saying “Can I paint now??”  (notice their cute, PLAIN shirts?  grrr)

We dipped the marble in the paint and plopped it into their box.  Away they went! 

They were cautious at first, even moving the marbles with their hands, but they got the hang of things after a few seconds and really started moving and shaking those boxes.   I think one marble even landed on the floor because of the feverish winging of the boxes. 

Cage’s box was a little more flat on the bottom, so his paint moved all around the paper. Jack’s box had a pretty bumpy bottom, so the marble tended to stay in the middle. 

After they did one page of marble painting, they were ready to really paint.  Evidently, marble painting to a 2 year old isn’t actually painting.  So we gave them new paper, put the paint in their boxes (GREAT idea, Bekah!) and let them really paint until there little hearts were content.  That lasted about 3 minutes.

Cage’s mom brought pom-poms and feathers to adorn on the paintings.   (I love Cage’s chubby little hands!)

It was a successful Educational Play Date this morning, I’d say!

They boys ended up playing in our sandbox for the rest of the time.  Which, we found out, has a mouse living in it.  I guess the tent over the top of the box didn’t keep the mice/chipmunks/moles/whatever it is! from digging up from the bottom of the box.