Marble painting was something I remember doing in elementary school. I absolutely LOVED it. I loved when the kids brought it home from school. Those paintings in particular always found their way to my office wall. I decided to do this with my 4-year-old and he had a blast. If you have any trouble finding marbles, beads or the plastic balls from some kids' games would work also.
Materials
- Washable paint in your choice of colors
- Cups for paint or an egg carton washed and dried
- Paper
- Marbles
- Shallow box with sides big enough for the paper to fit into (pizza boxes are perfect, just cut off the top and use the bottom)
- Add some paint and marbles to each cup. We put the paint into the small bathroom size drinking cups, using 1 color and 2 marbles per cup.
- Put your paper in the box. If it doesn't fit snugly into the box, tape it to the box to secure it.
- Push up those sleeves, grab a marble, and drop it onto the paper, then pick up the box and gently tilt it side to side, back to front and all around to get the marble rolling.
- Add as many marbles at a time as you feel are manageable for the child (I let my son do 3 or 4 at a time).
- Once all the paint is off the marble, put it in a clean cup to wash it off.
My son thought this was a blast, he made 5 or 6 paintings, some we put the paint directly on the paper then added the marbles to see if it would come out differently, some we used 1 color at a time to see what colors mixed to make others and so on. He really enjoyed experimenting with the size of the marbles, number of marbles and color mixing. Every time we finished one, he wanted to make another.
Clean up was pretty easy. I do suggest if you have the child get the marble out of the cup to either use a spoon, or wipe those fingers after each color, so the cups stay the color you want. Aside from the marbles and hands, everything we used was disposable for easy clean up. A little soap and water and then it was time to move on to the next project!
