Unplug your kids - ball

For this week's unplugged project, we combined a couple of activities I'd been reading about in the blogosphere - milk powder paint and marble painting.

I like using Stockmar watercolour paint which needs to be mixed for different colours, and diluted (the little bottles will stretch for ages if you do). In the past I have used just water, and a water & cornflour mix (this gives a great texture for fingerpainting, but really makes the colours pastel when they dry). I am always looking for something new to try, so this was a good experiment.

To make milk powder paint, mix equal amounts of skim milk powder and water, then add your colour. I used 1/2 cup of each, which made too much paint - it doesn't keep very well - you need a sealed jar in the fridge, so next time I will make less. Also, I am using a liquid paint instead of a powdered one, so it was a bit runnier than I wanted (why does a Monty Python skit suddenly start playing in my head? lol). Next time I will use a little less water as well. Other than that it turned out perfectly!

The red, blue and yellow are my basic colours; we mix them to make purple, green and orange as well. Wombat asked for two yellows. My paint palette is an old plastic microwave muffin 'tin'.

I lined a box with newspaper, put some A4 paper in and we splotted colour on with a spoon.

Then we added a marble (the ball for our project) and rolled it around.

One marble wasn't enough for Wombat, he threw in a few more and did some finger swirling for good measure.

All in all, a fun activity, though Wombat only wanted to do one picture (I think I was 'over-controlling' again... gotta learn to step back and let him experiment more.)

The paint dried well with a slightly glossy finish, and clean up was a breeze - the brushes and the palette washed clean really quickly - much easier than just the paint by itself lol.

Next week's Unplugged Project is : colour.