Colour/Movement exploration

Last week the children explored how sand moved from the spinners... we extended this through colouring the sand... which you can read about here and there is a film to watch the coloured sand on my facbook page Interaction Imagination...

As I watched the children explore with colour and movement in the playspace I wondered how we could extend this even further... and swing painting and slide painting came to mind... we decided that on the first sunny day the following week that we would take the paints with us to the park... and we did just that...

I packed the wheelie bag with blue, red, yellow, green and purple paint (bottle tempera)... I knew there would be just 4-5 children with us so i wnated the opportunity for the children to have colours to choose from... we enede up with just 4 children... 50% of our group still enjoying summer vacation. I also packed a roll of brown paper, some paper hand towels to clean hands (I turned out to be the only perosn who needed these) and some scissors. We also took our other wheeelie bag full of sand and outdoor toys...

When we got to our outdoor playspace destination we rolled out a length of paper that we felt would be long enough to meet the needs of the swing... the children filled buckets with sand to weigh down the cormers so that the paper di not fly away in the wind. The paper was cut and the children chose their colours...

swing painting

At first one of the children was quite apprehensive about this activity, but after watching the enjoyment of the other children this no longer became a problem and was eagerly waiting his turn.

Some of the paints were quite thick and therefore quite hard to squeeze out... at first i was not so happy with this... but then realised that it gave the children the opportunity to reflect on the differences between the bottles and why some paints were harder to squeeze out than others... They had some wonderful theories from their own strength, to the paint almost being finished to the paint being thick and harder to get out.

We then let the artwork ry in the sun... even though we were outdoors for 90 minutes after the activity that paint was far from dry... and we were quite far from the preschool... so it was deceided to fold the paper in half to create a new pattern... this pleased the children just as much... it was like magic. We opened it again to see the pattern and then folded it again and rolled it just before departing back to the preschool... once back I unfolded it so it could dry.


We also poured paint at the top pf the slide to see how it flowed down. Again the children were mesemerised and excited about all of this. They taled and discussed with each other about what they saw and why they thought all off this was happening. This took much more paint than the swinging activity... but was still worth it.

I had packed two full bottle and 3 half bottles of colour... only one of the half bottles was emptied... the two full bottles reduced by a third... I felt that the amount/cost of the paint was a worthwhile investment for the experience and the rich thinking/dialogue the children participated in

slide painting

 The slide painting was far from dry - after 90 minutes of sunshine play... so we just made the decision to roll it anyway to transport it back... I knew I had an old shower curtain back at the preschool that I could unfold it on to dry... and once dry flip it over so the back could dry... 24 hours later it was still not dry and ready to be flipped over... so hoping to do that tomorrow.

We did, though lift up the paper and hold it on its side to allow the colours to flow one more time... from the head like shape into the purple pattern...


I have cut up the paper from the slide action art into 8 pieces... I hope to use it as a background for another art project... soemthing to do with fairies... sicne it felt like the children were flying as they did this activity it seems quite an appropriate connection..

As yet I am not sure whether we should display the slide artwork as it is, or whether this too can be continued...

There are several films of this on my facebook page... early August 2015, if you would like to look for them...