Painting Outdoors with Water & Brushes

Have you ever tried painting with just water? It's such a simple open ended activity to set up & great for children to discover & freely explore

We used a large bowl of water & a selection of different sized brushes.

Here's how Minnie experimented...

First she wanted to 'paint' the wall & chose the smallest brush (which I thought she manipulated pretty well for her age).

She then took her selection of brushes to another side of the house & discovered a brick on the ground. After painting the walls she spent some time painting the solitary brick by her feet & covered (or 'coloured' in her words) each side of it.

Then she moved onto wood...

She loved painting the wood & watching as it absorbed the water.

Minnie spent most of her time exploring the fence & painted each panel from top to bottom! She was completely focused on this activity, & it was great to see her studying the movement of the brush as she painted, carefully collecting more water when the brush was dry & returning to the  panel she was working on.

It was so interesting to observe how Minnie manipulated the larger & smaller brushes, & how her brush strokes became much smaller & much more detailed with the smaller brush.

This was a really fun outdoor art activity to help develop hand eye co-ordination, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, creativity & imagination too.