Painting with Balloons

Painting is visual art that children can learn and develop their natural imagination, problem solving, sensory and motor skills. Today we are using balloons instead of paint brushes. Let's see how we do it.

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You'll Need

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Water paints

Different size balloons

Plastic plate

A piece of paper.

What We Do

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1. Put some paint in the plate. We use three main colours, red, blue and yellow  to start of with. 
2. Put a balloon on the paint, then stamp it on the paper.
3. Use your imagination and make anything pictures you want.

What They Learn

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1. Painting can be very messy, but that is how they learn. Children develop their sensory skills through their sensory messy plays. They can explore new textures of paint, paper, balloons, etc.
2. Painting requires motor skills to manipulate painting equipment. They use their fingers to move the balloons around the paper to create what they want. This is how they learn how to take control of their world.
3. Painting let children express their thoughts, ideas or even their experiences. When Miss Two did her painting, it looks like a blob to me. But she said it was a butterfly. So it was a butterfly!
4. Children learn about shapes through painting. Pressing balloons on to paper create circle shapes. What can you make from circles. 
5. Children learn about colour. They learn that if they mix two colours together, they create a new colour. Because we only use there main colours, red, green and blue, Mr Four needs to mix red and blue together to make his favorite purple colour.

Our children had so much fun (making a mess) and couldn't resist to use their fingers to finish their painting! Let's see what they have made!

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Spinning Top: Preschool Activity

Spinning top is a fun way to learn the concepts of motion, symmetry, and balance. Making their own spinning tops helps them to explore how does it work. What happened if you put the pencil to the side or place the cardboard on the top of the pencil. The process can help them develop basic scientific skills, start an hypothesis and test it out. Let's make one together. 

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You will need

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A Piece of Cardboard

A Circle Object to draw a circle with

A pencil

A pair of Scissors

Crayons to decorate

Let's do it

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1. Draw a circle on a cardboard by tracing the circle object. 
2. Use the scissor to cut the circle out. Be careful the scissors are sharp.
3. Decorate.
4. Make a hole in the middle of the cardboard, put a pencil through the hole. 
5. Spin!

What do they learn from the spinning top?

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1. Children can improve their fine motor skills. Twirling the stem of the top using the their fingers help them develop pincer grasp and dexterity. These skills can also benefit children with writing skill later. When they write, they need to manipulation and use the pencil with one hand.   
2. Children can learn physical science by observing the top spin, or wobble. A spinning top is designed to spin rapidly with its rotational inertia. Don't worry, we haven't gone that far with Miss Two and Mr Four yet.
3. Tops are designed to be symmetry, which is a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. Symmetry can be found in many areas, mathematic, physics, chemistry, biology, architecture, visual arts, music, and much more. Learning about symmetry can help them understand 

4. Making their own spinning tops helps them to explore how does it work. By providing them choices, they can try different way of making it. They can try making it big or small, using short/long/big/small pencil for the stem, or decorate it however they like. They can also try with different designs, what happened if they put the pencil to the side or place the cardboard on the top of the pencil. Then they can observe how their tops spin. Does it work? What are the colour of the tops look like? Mr Four found out that if he put the cardboard too high on the pencil, it didn't spin very well. The process can help them develop basic scientific skills, start a hypothesis and test it out.

Let's watch our children made spinning tops.

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