Paint - whole body experience...

Today we took the paints outside and went crazy... and with their only being two children that turned up today, they had lots of time and space to fully explore the paints...

I filled to big plastic boxes with water so the children could use them to sinse themselves off at any time - these became very popular to climb in and out of and add an extra layer of wetness to the whole art experience...

We looked at the colours of summer.... and started off with green, blue, white and yellow (more colours would come later)...

A huge piece of paper was taped to the ground - the bottles of paint were put close by... and the children were given free reign to experience and create with the paint (a few encouragements here and there, to challenge and deepen the experience).

At first one of the children was not keen on getting messy and asked for a brush... but I kept to the plan of it being sensory and said no to see what would happen... and it did not take long for the child to watch the joyful sensory experience of the other child and give it a try himself... and enjoy it too.

The paint was experienced with the whole body, and I got to see (just about) a whole body print being made...

Just before lunch I took the art in, as I suspected it might rain... and just as well I did as the heavens open with a big thunder-storm. The children slept through it...

In the afternoon I mixed paint, washing liquid and a little water together in pots and got the children to blow bubbles.... the idea being the bubbles would create new patterns - and also be a work-out for their mouths and aid pronunciation. It was an experiment to do it directly on the paper.... usually I catch the bubbles on a paper from a above (and that I think is much more successful when it come to capturing the bubble patterns) - but today was a different experience... One of the pots got knocked over , so the pool could be blown on to make splashes and rivers... and at the end we threw the foam and last bits of paint onto the paper with our finger tips to make wonderful raindrop sounds... (I was filled with paint then so I didn't get any photos of that process... to much having fun with the children too)

So now I will let the photos do the talking...

squeezing out the paint... this was VERY fun

moving on to experience the paint with hands

and then feet

making footprints

lying down and swimming in the paint.... like a mermaid

the thick layer of paint was perfect for topping up the paint layer...

and when there was enough paint you could clearly see the joy of spreading the paint over the body, and then the arms too...

making body prints

and taking the time to check them out...

they were in and out of the water the whole time... this was very much a part of the sensory process

glorious painted tummies... then it was time to get in the warm shower and clean up

blwoing coloured bubbles

it was not so easy... a little practice of blowing tissue paper around the floor first to help the blwoing skills (and to avoid the sucking skills)

the painting so far... starting to get some ideas about where we could take it... but will check with the children first...