Painting a Puddle

 

Puddle activities are super fun. Have you seen us make a puddle fizz?

Since then, the concrete area in our backyard was fixed and a drain installed, so we don’t get massive puddles like that anymore. The small puddles we do still get are just enough for splashing in them, or for painting a puddle.

We came up with this activity pretty spontaneously. Earlier that day, E had asked about “the sprinkles in the jars with the white tops” – she was talking about the powder tempera. When we went outside later and discovered the puddle, it came naturally to E to put the frogs in it.

And suddenly, I knew just what to do with “the sprinkles”.

 

 (E was four years and two months old.)

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Materials for Painting a Puddle:

• Powder tempera. {Powdered food coloring works, too. Or use liquid paint/food coloring for a whole different effect.}
• Glitter (optional).
• Plastic frogs (optional but fun 😉 ).
• Chopstick or skewer (optional). 

 

E started the activity by throwing plastic frogs that had been sitting around the yard since her birthday party into the puddle.

 

 

For some reason, this one had to go into a separate puddle clear across the yard 😉

 

 

E picked some purple tempera to go in first.

 

 

It made the puddle look awesome, and the frogs went very well with it 😉

E used a chopstick to stir the colorful puddle a bit 

 

 

but it wasn’t enough – we just HAD to add more!

 

 

E stuck the chopstick into the green tempera and transferred some of the paint into the puddle that way.

 

 

But that was really slow going, so she decided to just dump the rest of the green tempera,

 

 

then added some glitter.

 

 

Once all the glitter and all the paint had gone in, E had some fun stirring the puddle again and watching the colors swirl into each other.

 

 

Several frogs had powder tempera on their backs from when E had dumped the paint, and E decided they needed to be washed off. Rinsing didn’t work all that well but she did her best.

 

 

While E played, we were able to watch the paint moving slowly but steadily toward the drain.

 

 

Have you ever tried painting a puddle? What materials would you use? Leave a comment below to let me know!

 

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