Wobbling Around...Wobble Painting!

So, I found this great idea for "wobble painting" at specialclassroom.blogspot.com.  For children who aren't able to physically hold a paintbrush, "wobbling" a bowl around can make for a great painting experience!  I used several plastic bowls, taped the rounded tops of plastic salt and pepper shakers to the bottom of each bowl and created our painting experience!

We used blue and green paint, paper cut in circles to fit the bottom of the bowl, tiny "porcupine" balls, cat toys with bells inside and tiny egg shaped "porcupine balls.  The children twirled the bowl, wobbled it by batting at it, held it in their hands and rocked it back and forth and experimented with how fast they could spin it and then how high they could make the balls go around the lip of the bowl before they threatened to fly out!  (Those would be our Bumblebee Boulevard friends!)   I'm seriously considering covering the bowls with plastic wrap next time so the kids can twirl the bowl as much as they want without having the ball fly out...although that may take away a bit of the fun...and, of course, would take away a bit from the scientific experimentation! 

Now, of course the little guy I REALLY wanted to experiment with this the most was struggling to stay awake at this point, so we will have to try this again next week with some different colors! 

It was interesting to note that each finished painting was so unique!  The colors blended together to create a kind of "earth" look!  The children that only used the porcupine balls had paintings with tiny specks of color throughout (left photo)!  The children who had the bell balls as well as the porcupine balls had smoother paintings with more even color!  I can't wait to try this again!  We may have to try some different variations on this activity; I'm sure the kids will be up for more experiments with wobble painting!