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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Sorting by Colours Activity for Toddlers

Miss Two and I are playing this sorting colour game for awhile. She loves the game. She can sit there and play for a long time. There are many many ways of sorting, sort by shape, sort by material, etc. Today we'd like to play sorting colours game. This activity is easy and only takes a few seconds to set up. You can use any colour objects to sort, For example, popsticks, plastic lids, pipe cleaner, small toys etc. Be careful when you choose the toys make sure they are not too small for little ones to choke on. We use wooden colour buttons for our fun. Let's get started.

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You will need

Assorted colour wooden buttons.

A piece of paper

Crayons 

What you will do

1. Draw and colour in circles with matched colour crayon and buttons. The little one can help.
2. Sort the coloured buttons and match them to the correct colour areas.

When we started playing, Miss Two had no idea how this works. With her brothers help, he guided her how to do it for a couple minutes. After that she could do it all by herself. Sorting games are not only fun activity, children gain more benefits from the game much more than you thought.

1. Sorting is a basic mathematical method. Sorting activities help them understand that things are alike and different as well as that they can belong and be organized into groups. 
2. Sorting is something that helps children make sense of their world. They create order in a world that seems out of their control with basic math skills of matching, sorting and classifying. 
3. Sorting can increase childrens literacy skill by naming the object, shape, colour, etc. Miss Two learnt about colour through this sorting game. 
4. When playing sorting game together, they can work on communication skills. 
5. Sorting help training the brain to create more organized thoughts and ways of retrieving information. This skill can be applied to other areas of their life in the future. 

Watch our children play Sorting by Colours

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Balloon Rocket Preschool Science Experiment

Balloon rocket is an easy and fun way for children to learn science. For our preschool children, we do not really talk about physic theory behind how it works. However, they did a lot of observation which is a basic skill for a scientist. Mr Four actually came up with how did it work. We talked about the direction that the rocket would go, how to do make it go farther, etc.

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I found a lot of balloon rocket projects that attach a balloon to a straw on a piece of string. As preschool children, this method didn't work very well with them. They tend to like just to blow the balloon up and let it go. Sticking an inflated balloon directly to a straw is hard to do. Plus, they can't keep  it blown up and let go as a balloon with sticky tape on tends to blast too easily. So we came up with a solution.  

What you need

  

A balloon

    A long piece of string

   A straw

   Sticky tape

   A pair of scissor

What you do

1. Tie one end of the string to a heavy fixture in the room such as a chair or door. Thread the other end of the string through the straw and pull it tight. 
2. Tie the loose end to another fixed object, keeping it tight. 
3. Attach a balloon to a straw, as shown in the picture above, then attach it to the straw on the string. 
4. Blow up the balloon.
5. You’re ready for launch! Let go of the balloon and watch it fly across the room.

For toddlers like Miss Two, she had fun blowing up the balloon and let it go. Blowing up a balloon is a great way to practice mindfulness of breathing, how to center in on their core and use their lung capacity to breathe more powerfully. For preschoolers like Mr Four, observing the balloon go along the string helps them understand more about natural cause and effect. And most important thing is fun. They learn best through play, don't they?

Watch our children playing balloon Rocket.

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