Balloon-tiful art!

To introduce our topic of materials, in preschool we had the chance to explore a new way of painting. To enhance on offering new experiences with paint, we set up a tray to encourage expressive arts and design with the use of balloons. In this tray the children had the chance to delve into different ways to paint and mark make.

Firstly we filled multiple balloons with paint, water, coffee granules, bow shaped pasta, salt and lastly cornflour mixed with water. This was to extend the children’s sensory opportunities as well as using these balloons to paint with too, to see the different effects on the marks they made. During this exercise, it offered the children many communication and language building opportunities, talking about textures, using words such as “squishy, soft, spikey and cold”.

We also offered the children cotton buds and feathers, alongside paintbrushes, to see which they would go for first, would it have been the paintbrushes or other options? The children thoroughly enjoyed painting with the cotton buds and feathers, but actually much preferred exploring the paint with their fingers to paint their balloons! They had so much fun exploring their senses touching the soft feathers, and feeling the cold paint on their tiny fingers!

This was a lovely activity that kept the children entertained for a long time, they used their own critical thinking skills to build on their play and showcased their fantastic imaginations! Well done preschool, as always you have outdone yourselves!