I had an idea for a crafty preschool project that needed a bit of testing first. After a spin for the project, I let the nephew-a-go-go go for it with my stash of happy paint.
Salad spinner as a painting tool is a favorite of mine. I have done this with twos, threes, fours, fives...sand now a ten year old.
The simple process of placing the filter or paper into the basket, squeezing the paint onto the paper, placing the lid onto the spinner, and then manually making it all spin uses all sorts of both fine and gross motor skills. We've used three different types of spinners at the preschool and each one offers up a bit of a challenge for each child. The cool part is once they master one spinner, they can move on to a different design.
Once all designs have been mastered, you can extend spin art through dialogue, estimations, and predictions. There's also a slew of art and science words you can use. While the nephew a-go-go was going for it, we discussed how keeping it to three colors would keep the art interesting. We spoke of the color wheel and I introduced complementary colors.
We also talked about placement of the paint and how the paint moves to the edges of the paper. I gave him the term centrifugal force and we then talked about that.
But mostly we squirted paint and spun ourselves silly.
Check out this nifty video on color. Yay for Bill Nye!
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