Summer Spaghetti Painting - part 1

Four different greens - the green on the right eventually got some black added to it, so that there was more contrast.
A pile of spaghetti and paper.
This is a movement painting - its not just about the spaghetti moving on the paper to create patterns but that the children move to. And to do this they need to cooperate.
At the start the children were trying to work out who was going to have which green - and no matter how many times that I said we are all sharing it took a good 10 minutes before it sank in that four greens would not be enough for five children to have one each... oh, sharing....!
The idea that of not having a fixed place while painting was also another challenge. At first the would not move - they stretched across each other trying to reach the spaghetti, the paint and the paper - eventually working out that if they move around the table it made everything so much easier.
And so the spaghetti dance began.

the spaghetti tap danced across the paper - one of the children noticed the noise and pointed it out to the others... "listen listen... "

the paper slowly filled with colour and movement

Here is the final image of step one. Just greens. Tomorrow we will be observing the colour of flowers when we are outside in the forest... and the spaghetti painting will be continued using the flower colours we find...

afterwards there was time for exploration - to use the paint and the spaghetti - to squeeze it and create new sounds...

and to admire the transformation of hands 

time to create spaghetti burgers, spaghetti cars, spaghetti rain...

time to explore the strength of spaghetti

and their own strength... when does the spaghetti break - is it easier with a few strands or many strands... lots and lots of testing...

and when it came to cleaning up the mix of water and bubbles created a new texture - perfect for writing letters in - loud exclamations of joy as recognisable letter appeared from skating fingers in the mess...

This session was part of the children's choice morning - where we offer two choices - the last few weeks it has simply been inside or outside - this week was the first time we offered specific activities - mostly as we were curious to see if this would influence how the children chose...
Five of the eight children chose to be inside and do the spaghetti painting - three went outside to play with cars and look for snails...
There were 2x two year olds, 2x three year olds and one four year old.
None of the children put the spaghetti anywhere near their mouths - at the start the four year old asked if they could eat the spaghetti - I answered that today the spaghetti was like a paint brush and not meant for eating.
The child that spent the longest time painting was the child my colleague and I had discussed last week as to not painting much and how we could make painting more attractive - I guess we succeeded! The three children who paint the most often were the three that finished first...
One of the children does not like to get messy - and yet during this activity relaxed the messy barrier and enjoyed the process.

This was most definitely a wonderful process with lots of sensory learning and oodles of social learning!

When the painting is complete I will show them some images of painting created by Jackson Pollock - and see if they think there are any similarities...