MAMA Children’s Activity Post: Mixing water colours with water play!

We’ve been fortunate to have some lovely weather over the last few weeks and there’s apparently a heat wave on the way (fingers crossed)! With this lovely weather we have spent a lot of time playing outside in the garden. This usually means some element of water play as this is my son’s favourite! One day he then requested his “water paints” so I thought why not let’s take the art outdoors and have some fun!

Equipment:

– Plastic activity mat.
– Towel.
– Old clothes/aprons.
– Watercolour paints.
– Mark making tools (brushes/sponges/rollers/Pom-Poms).
– Water pots (small and large).
– Paper/card.
– Toys for water play.
– Wipes.
– Sun cream and hats!

Step 1: Setting up your outdoor space.

We chose to do this activity on the grass where we had a little bit of sun and a little bit of shade. I put out the activity mat and towel along with the paints, water pots, mark making tools and toys. We put on old clothes and made sure we had suncream and sun-hats on. We then filled our pots with water – my son liked using the watering cans to do this!

Step 2: Water playing and painting!!

We had used the water colour paints before in a previous blog (Drip drip drip little April showers) so he had the right idea from the get go this time with regards to wetting the mark making tools then putting them in the paint and then creating beautiful patterns on the paper. He loved mixing it up with some splashing and waterplay in between.

I left the activity out for a while and he kept coming back to it after a little play elsewhere which made it a good worthwhile activity. Also as it involved water it kept him nice and cool and relatively clean!

Step 3: Tidy tidy tidy up!

As it was sunny we left our paintings to dry in the sun. We then used our water to wash our mark making tools with and water the plants with. Wipes sufficed with regards to the rest of the clean up! This activity was a lot more about fun, and keeping cool rather than the final product that being said he did make some lovely patterns.

We hope you all have some fun taking the art outdoors in the lovely weather! Please feel free to share any of your MAMA activity makes with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and follow us at http://www.megaawesomemessyart.com