before we kick off project play this week, i have to apologize for my vacant blog…we have been busy packing up our house, for a much needed move into a larger home. needless to say, our life is currently somewhere on the border stuck between crazy and insane 🙂 more deep thoughts on moving coming your way, but for now, let’s PLAY!…

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project play * marble painting

we had a great time with this activity!  M {3} was super excited to play with marbles *and* paint. i wanted to incorporate N {7 months} into the activity, so for her i just added a few marbles and some paint to empty water bottles.  i screwed the lids on well and let her explore the bottles in her high chair while M marble painted. she loved the sound the marbles made in the plastic bottles and by the time she was finished the bottles were brightly colored!

for M, i taped pieces of freezer paper {my favorite art paper!} into a plastic tray, added some squirts of paint and a few marbles, and then he tipped and tilted the tray to create cool paintings. we experimented with different amounts of paint and different numbers of marbles to find the best ratio. this was a great activity for M to learn about mixing colors. it was fun to add just 2 colors to the tray and let him try and guess what color it would be after they mixed.

clean up was easy peasy! i just rinsed the marbles and the tray and set out M’s papers to dry. when they were dry, i cut them into circles and hung them in a window. M decided they looked like planets!

marble painting. what can i say? i wish i could say it was as great of a success for us as it was for rebecca’s crew…but sunshine? the marbles, he was all “eh.” but get those darn cars into the paint, and he’ll sit there for hours. HOURS i say. i’m telling you, we have a car obsession. a BIG one. and i’m going to give you a little disclaimer right now…

{disclaimer : i can. not. promise that cars will not make an entrance into all of our projects in some way, shape or form.}

whew, i feel better getting that off my chest. now, back to the marbles. we did give the marbles a shot, and if we pretended we were race car drivers as we steered the marble around the track, i was able to keep sunshine on task longer than anticipated. it didn’t take long for him to figure out that, though race car driving was fun, it would be double the fun to race real cars through the paint. sooooo, that’s what we did! it’s so fun to watch these projects evolve when the kiddos take control!

either way, whether with marbles or cars, this project was a blast! the washable paint made it a breeze to clean up and allowed me to relax and let him truly explore the paint. we kept a wet rag nearby for him to wipe up any spills, and when we were done, we tossed the bin outside to let the paint dry! woot-woot!

we hope you’re enjoying project play with your little ones as much as we are! as always, we would LOVE to see what you’re up to, so leave a comment below with a link to your project play images!

until next time…play on dear friends!

xoxo,

stacey * rebecca

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