Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Painting Nature



I saw these wonderful Candied Gumballs on Casa Maria's Creative Learning Zone. Be sure to check out the both of the follow up posts, Gumball Sculptures Project 1 and Tie Dyed Gumballs, as well.



We have so many gumballs around our area, that I knew we had to try this. Our playground is literally covered with them, and the kids spend hours collecting, counting, and playing with them in a multitude of ways. It was a "no-brainer" to put some in our art center to let the children have a go at painting them.



Most of our gumballs fall with pretty long stems attached, so we didn't use toothpicks, we just held on to the stem. Instead of dipping them, we used paintbrushes to apply the acrylic paint.


With the first few balls, the kids were hesitant, and only painted portions of the balls.



They looked pretty cool individually.






After letting them dry for a few days, I added string and attached them to a nice branch to make a mobile to hang from the ceiling. ( For photographic purposes, I placed white paper behind it to show it better.)






9 comments:

  1. I love this! I wish we had those around here - they have great shape!

    ReplyDelete
  2. They turned out beautiful! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. We love to collect driftwood and paint in the same way...sometimes the children plant them in a pattern or shape in the sandpit, turn them into sculptures by planting into a slab of clay or making minature worlds by planting into a tub of dirt. We have also threaded and tyed them together and hung or glued and arranged directly onto recycled boards.

    ReplyDelete
  4. These are beautiful! I would display them at home!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love this kind of stuff! My daughter calls them "ouchies" when we see them outside lol.

    Id love to hear everyone’s inputon a new early childhood education project Iv started! (plus you get to see a really sweet video of my life with my very comical daughter) Feel free to share! I really need all the support I can get, this is my dream :)
    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/38847058/brilliant-bundles-presents-shapes

    ReplyDelete
  6. Woohoo, can't believe I have my own gumballs thanks to you! You are a star!!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting little illuminations. I'd love you to share your thoughts!

Thanks for stopping by!

Popular Posts

AdSense