Family Skate Painting

Today we created a new collaborative painting game. We had a big leftover foam board from work — and we made it into our canvas. We began with small foam burshes in rectangle and circle shapes.

I squirted out a few different colors around the board, and the kids ot to make different shapes. Lines — dots — map squiggles — swirls and circles — smeary blobs. We went through five colors and different shapes.

Then came the most fun and slippery part — we annonced ‘ice skating time’. The kids put their brushes down, and (in their old, outside shoes) skated around the foam board. They made turns, slides, and figure 8s. The paint was slick but not too slippery, so we didn’t have to worry too much about falling over. The colors sharted to blend together and we asked the kids to watch what their footprints would look like in the paint.

We did a few more rounds of new paint and then, after about 10 minutes of paint-skating, called it complete.

We took the kids in for a very thorough bath, and let the foam board dry in the sun. After 2 hours, I coated it with a matte sealant, to keep the color and texture. We’ll make a few more panels in coming weeks, so we can hang them around our play area. They turned out like an impressionist pastel painting — and lots of little footprints to notice.