Paint with Bouncy Balls

It's been a pretty busy week this past week, which has meant not a lot of time to either create or post. But we've still had a few fun things up our sleeves. This bouncy ball painting activity was something I'd been wanting to try for a while. Now that the sun and warm weather are back, it made for a great deck activity.

Somehow it feels like every time the boys get to pull a prize from a "treasure box" somewhere else (think dentist office, school, game prizes) they wind up picking a bouncy ball. We now have lots of these little bouncy balls hanging around, which lead to me thinking of how to use them. 

Materials: 
Bouncy balls of various sizes
Colored poster paint in small containers
Paper
A large plastic tub or cardboard bin
Small cup of water

We used one of our paint containers to put out 6 different colors of paint. We filled the center with water. We started with a plastic tub, but then switched to a cardboard box. Our bin just wasn't letting the balls bounce high enough, although the cardboard made a big improvement. 

To paint, the boys dipped a bouncy ball into one of the paint colors. They then held it over the container and let the ball drop. It would bounce a few times and roll a little across the bin. Wherever it went, it left a small trail of paint. 

When they were done with one color they would dip and rinse the bouncy ball in the water. They could then dip the ball into another color. We experimented with the different sized balls, and also with dropping the balls from different heights. 

We created a couple of different papers. The pictures have a cool look of being between marble painting and splatter painting. 

We've already managed to get a few new bouncy balls, one of them even larger than our other biggest one, so we're hoping to try this painting style again with an even larger ball. 

We love painting in unusual ways. Don't forget to check out some of our other painting posts! 

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