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.)