Crafting with Little Kids: “Marbled” paper eggs

Here is a painting technique with golf balls that can be used for all sorts of themed projects. For this project we used egg shapes cut out of construction paper to decorate for Easter and spring, but plain paper, or any shape will work as well. My son first painted with golf balls at preschool and enjoyed it so much we decided to try it at home. We are not golfers, so I purchased plastic golf balls at a sporting goods store, but all you really need is two or three golf balls, so if you know a golfer, borrow some! Supplies:

• 3 golf balls
• washable paint (we used crayola kid paint)
• paint brushes
• paper eggs: use this template or draw your own on construction paper
• 3 or four sheets of construction paper in spring colors for the eggs
• scissors
• small box or lid from a copy paper box (shoebox would work too)

Directions:

1. Using a template of an egg, trace it several times onto a sheet of construction paper. I held three different colors of paper together and cut the egg shapes out so I only had to trace on one sheet.
2. Place a paper egg shape, or more if they fit, into the box. Have your child dab some small blobs of paint onto each paper egg in random spots. Two or three dots is good to start. (We found that too much paint was a mess, but too little didn’t work either. Experiment to see what works best for you. Squeezeable paint tubes probably work great for this, but we didn’t have that on hand.)



3. Add two or three golf balls to the box and show your child how to tilt the box in different directions to make the balls roll around. As the roll around they will pick up some of the paint and create a marble or textured effect on the paper. Roll them around until your child is satisfied with how the paint looks. We added different colors of paint to see how they combined. The more the balls roll around the more marbled the paint will be.



4. Let painted eggs dry and decorate with them. We plan to decorate a bulletin board with them, but they would also make cute cards to give to grandparents or friends.

Note: The golf balls should wash up clean and can be saved for future use or returned to your golfer if they were borrowed. I saved the box we used so that we can re-use it for the next time we use this painting technique.

Happy Spring!

You can find more kids’ craft ideas and preschool adventures on Diane’s blog Knitting Zeal!