straw painting

A few days ago Julie set up an art activity that was quite popular with many of the children throughout the morning. Julie created a thin, watercolor-like paint with the bits of pigment that always remain in the easel paint jars when they no linger have enough paint in them to use at the easel. She provided eye droppers and short pieces of drinking straws. The children used the droppers to put drops of paint on their paper and then used the straws to blow the paint around, creating lines and blobs of intense color. At first, this seems quite simple, but much work and planning went into the creation of the resulting paintings. The kids used their small hand and finger muscles (the very same ones they use when writing with a pencil) to squeeze the bulb of the eye-dropper, dip it in the paint, and stop squeezing in order to allow the paint to be drawn up into the cylinder. They then reversed the process to get the paint on to their papers. That’s a lot of planning! And a lot of fine motor control! The straws added another opportunity for control as each child manipulated his/her straw around the paper (which was taped to the table) in order to move the paint. A soft puff of air might not move the paint, while a hard blow often made the blob of paint travel right off the paper.