Preschool Ocean Art: Salt Painting

This month we are becoming Deep Sea Divers and exploring the Ocean with our Ocean Commotion Unit from Mother Goose Time.  We live about 4 hours from the coast, and my girl has yet to see the ocean; but that didn't stop us from experiencing.

We first tasted the Ocean.

After drinking regular water, we added a little bit of salt to our cup so we could taste what ocean water is like.  The face my girl made was priceless!  Wish I had my camera then.  

She obviously didn't like it, and when I asked her what it tasted like she said,"Yucky!"  

I told her that the ocean was filled with salt and we were going to make some art using salt today.

We've done salt painting in the past (a year and a half ago) when we first discovered 

Mother Goose Time, and I absolutely LOVE it!

I set up this Invitation to Create.

One thing I try to always do, especially when we paint, is use Artist tape around the edges.  It creates a nice border for her art, keeps the paper in place, and really gives a great finished look to the final piece.  

I asked my girl what 3 colors she wanted to use, and she said red, blue and yellow.

I put about 3-5 drops of our liquid watercolors in each cup and then added water.  MGT sent us a pipette, paper, the image you see on the stand and a little packet of salt.  I knew she would want more salt, so I poured a generous amount of table salt into her bowl while she grabbed a spoon from her play kitchen,  Then she started to paint.

The magic really started to happen when she placed the salt on her paper.  She loved pouring it into piles and it gave her work some beautiful dimension.  It was fascinating watching how the color would spread through the salt.  We did end up propping up her tray so the watercolor would go down the paper instead of pooling in a spot.  She painted her masterpiece for about 30-45 minutes, but it needed to dry overnight.

We looked at it this morning and it was so gorgeous!  The colors were rich and the dimension was so intriguing.  The salt had crystallized and adhered to the paper. However as I went to grab my camera to take a picture, she pressed her finger into the dried mound of salt, cracking, and breaking apart the mound!  My insides screamed "NO" as my head reminded me,

"This is her work.  Let her mess with it."

"I just want to touch it," she replied.  So she did, and while the paper was still taped to the tray, we tapped it upside down over the trash to loosen the salt bits she had scratched away.

Then something magical happened.

As we turned the tray over, we saw the most exquisite colors and craters!  I let her tap on her tray some more over the trash can, and the end result is below. 

It is absolutely gorgeous!

I have about 5 of her abstract paintings that she has created using MGT framed throughout the house.  You better believe this too will be framed!  

I could just stare and look at all these little nooks and crannies of color.

I can't wait to make some more.  Maybe I'll do my own.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook for more adventures and quick ideas to try with your learners!

And if your a Pinterest junkie like me, you can follow me here.

Here are links for my go-to items for our art projects:

            

Happy Painting!

Rainbow Rice Ocean Sensory Bin

When possible, I love to make sensory play bins for my 3.5 year old girl.

Most of the time our bins match the theme we are studying with our Preschool curriculum,
Mother Goose Time.  I haven't made her a new bin in the last 3 months.  #momfail.

However, our next month study is OCEAN COMMOTION and my girl LOVES her some Octonauts and ocean animals.  I knew I had to make her a bin for this theme!

SUPPLIES

big container of some sort (we used this one)

rice (we bought a 20 lb bag but only used about 1/2)

liquid watercolors (we used these) or food coloring

 Gallon sized Ziploc bags 

(we only used 2 bags by going in this order: 1 bag: yellow, orange, red   2nd bag: green, blue, purple)   Trays or wax paper to dry your rice colors

Ocean animals (we found this one with 40 pieces for $10 at Walmart!)

DIRECTIONS

Of course I had to have my big helper assist in making her sensory bin!

• She measured 4 cups of rice and placed it into a gallon sized Ziploc bag. 
• Then I did a few squirts (it does not take much) of the liquid watercolor.
• Zip it shut, hand it to your big helper and let them shake it up!
• If your rice is still white in areas, add another squirt or two of your water color. 
• After doing the yellow, my girl wanted to squirt in the color, so I let her but I didn't really show her how to do it and she squeezed a ton of orange into the rice! It was drenched!  That tray had to dry outside.  I made sure to really show her how to put in the color on the next bag. 
• Pour out your rice onto trays, cookie sheets, or wax paper and spread out.

It takes no time at all for this to dry!

After the trays were dry (30 minutes or so), it was time to assemble our sensory bin.

Now I totally was going to make all the rice blue and green to symbolize water, but my girl has been into rainbow everything lately.  I figured the coral reef was a rainbow of colors, so it's perfect for our ocean bin.

No filter!  The liquid watercolors give intense beautiful color with just a few drops!

I poured each tray carefully so that the colors didn't mix.  I wanted my girl to do all the mixing during her play.  After I poured the rainbow of rice, she took out her animals one by one and named just about every single one.  And she didn't just say shark or whale... she knew it was an Orca or Humpback Whale.  She has learned so much from Octonauts...seriously. :)

These were $10 at Walmart and $24 on Amazon.

Isn't it beautiful!  We added a few scoops and bowls from her play kitchen, 

and once she had all her animals in place, it was time to play!

"Momma, will you make this walrus talk?"

She likes for me to pretend with her as we make the animals talk.
And that's what we did for most of the entire afternoon.  I love watching her imagination grow.

Today her ocean sensory bin looks like this:

Most of every animal in our Ocean Commotion unit is in this bin!

It's going to be an awesome month of MGT Preschool fun!



Happy Learning!