Blog

Last week when we were painting our giant Easter eggs, I noticed a bit of painting on the table going on, so decided to have this for our activity this week 🙂

I covered the table in a shower curtain and provided 3 pots of paint.

As I suspected, cars make an activity a whole lot more appealing!

K experimented with the marks he could make by running the cars backwards and forwards through the paint.

R adopted a slightly different approach, using the car like a brush to make large swooshing marks.

Despite his reluctance to join in with the activity when it was just brush painting, K did use the brush in his explorations to add more paint to the table to run his cars through!

Explorations fully under way!

K played in a similar way with the cars as he had done on the floor, but the additional paint enhanced his play, apparently becoming the cause of many crashes!

R continue her exploration with the paint, enjoying both mixing the paints and adding them to the table, sometimes creating new colours along the way.

I showed K how he could drag his finger through the paint to make a road for his cars.

Building dexterity in his wrist with all that twisting and turning to stay on the road.

R became really engaged with this activity, happily adding layer upon layer of paint to the shower curtain.  There was no talk accompanying her play, but she was clearly engrossed in what she was doing.

She then decided to paint the cars…..

which, as well as being highly amusing 🙂 also took our activity in a whole new direction.

Not being one to miss out on anything to do with cars, K soon joined in!

Now why hadn’t I thought of painting cars!!

Only problem was we needed more cars to paint! I added some of the bigger lorries which would require more than one brushstroke to paint.

Purposefully painting each wheel in turn.

Then it was requested that the cars needed to be cleaned, which again changed the direction of the activity.  I provided a small amount of water and cloths and the children set to work.

I did have to keep reminding them that they needed to squeeze out their cloths, but kept a towel to hand.

They seemed to enjoy cleaning as much as painting!

I showed them how they could also use the cloths to clean the table, an activity and clear up all in one :-))

Love how she holds the car up close to her face so she can make sure she gets all the paint off!

While the children were engaged with the cars and cloths, I started to clean up the rest of the table as they had clearly finished their paint exploration.

Inevitably the cars ended up in the water – still that would save me having to wash them after!

One of the messier activities we have done, but it kept the children engaged right until the end and even enabled me to clear up the parts they had finished with whilst they continued to play.  The children dictated the pace of the activity and the direction it took, following their interests.  I can honestly say even though, it was a very messy activity, it was one of the most relaxed we have done.