Salad Spinner Painting

We hadn't done this in a long time. As in, not since I had all preschoolers...a LONG time ago, in another economic climate. I hadn't tried it with little ones. It went surprisingly well. 

One of the issues with the little ones right off, though, was that in painting we work to paint out the "blobs." In this activity they are purposefully making blobs to spin out. They all found it difficult to not paint out and just leave the blobs in the middle. 

I expected that the 3yo wouldn't have any trouble with manipulating the turning mechanism.

 But even the littlest at 22mo had no problem with just a few moments of trial and error. I did have to hold it. Next time I'll put a rubber mat under it so that they can be independent. 

 As always, even using the same medium and materials, they always do things a little differently and end up with different results.

 The 10yo could REALLY get it going. The children were fascinated to watch the paint flying around and the basket spinning so fast. I do think that this activity is more about the process than the product. They really enjoyed DOING it. 

I did help give them all a final good spin before opening.
They probably would have done better for the littler ones if the paint had been watered down a little. We'll try that next time.

Preschoolers can be shown how to do circles in the middle to overlap and fan out, color blocking, etc. For these young ones, though, I think the blobs of primary colors worked just fine. 

They agree. They gave it a rating of:

Tags: painting, preschool, prek, daycare, childcare, salad spinner, art, color, fine motor, craft