marbles | Today We Did

Blobs of paint.

For these paintings each of the kids had a cardboard tray that we laid a piece of paper in the bottom of, then blobbed paint onto the paper. A requested a lot more paint than L.

Rolling the marbles about.

They each chose some marbles to place in their tray. We have a collection of small marbles, and a few larger ones, over which the girls argued. The largest marbles made larger tracks in the paint, but the size of the marbles didn’t really matter for this painting technique. Both L and A placed more than one marble in at a time, and then tilted the tray about to make the marbles roll around. If they tilted the tray too fast the marbles would sometimes fly right out, and we ended up with a few splashes of paint, but that’s what the muck mat is for.

One of L’s marble paintings.

Once the marbles ran through the blobbed paint, they transported the paint all over the paper, making lovely patterns. As A had used so much paint, some of her marbles actually got stuck in the paint, and we had to push them along. It also meant that the paint colours mixed together and covered the paper, allowing the marbles to form tracks in the paint, rather than making tracks with the paint.

These are easy and fun paintings to do, and they look great!

A’s paper with lots of paint.

A rolling her marbles through the paint.

More rolling marbles.

A’s finished marble track paintings.

We recently bought a cool rubber bath mat with ducks on it. It looks funky in the bath, and the kids love it. The bottom of it is covered in little suction cups, and thanks to Creative Playhouse, we were able to use it for an activity that didn’t involve the bath this morning.

A bag of marbles and a bath mat, add some tongs, chopsticks and large pegs, and we got a great fine motor skill activity.

A using her fingers, L using the red tongs

I placed the bath mat upside down on the deck, with a bowl of marbles. First off, A placed the marbles on the suction cups using her fingers, but that was pretty easy. The red silicone tipped tongs were great for picking up the marbles, but the stainless steel tongs were somewhat difficult to use. L used some chopsticks and the marbles shot out of them across the deck. With some persistence, L mastered the chopsticks and the stainless steel tongs. A preferred the red tongs. We had some large pegs big enough to pick up the marbles, but A didn’t find them particularly interesting.

Using chopsticks and tongs.

I had trouble finding marbles, I thought the cheap shops would have them, but I couldn’t find any. I ended up with a bag from kmart that had all the marbles the same size. I am on the lookout for a bag of assorted sized marbles to try the activity again to see if different sized marbles make it easier or harder. They might be good for an ordering and sorting activity too.