Roller Painting

The first time I put this activity out for Miss M she was so excited. Now it has become a favourite that we do every now and again. It is a very easy activity. You just need to source the equipment before having a bash at it. We found some small paint rollers at Overflow (cheap shop) but you could also pick them up from art stores. They may be a bit pricey. Overflow stocks a good assortment of art supplies for a good price. We bought the rollers for about $1.00 each.

You will need...

Paint rollers - choose the size you want. You could do tiny little ones, medium ones or why not try large house paint ones on butchers paper. That would be great fun!

Paper or cardboard - we chose to do ours on white easel paper.

Paint - we chose Cel Mix but you could use acrylic or a mix of both together. Depends on the effect you'd like.

Paint tray/s - washed meat trays or those you get fish and chips on are great for this.

Squeeze a good amount of paint on to the tray. I set ours up with all the colours on the one tray but they can be done separately too.

Put paper on a table, the ground or easel, depending on your circumstances.

Let your child go creatively crazy as they use the roller brushes to put paint all over the paper.

While your child paints you can talk about the colours mixing or the action they are doing eg: "roly poly", "up and down", "side to side".

To extend this activity you could....

• Sing "We're Going Up" - Playschool
• Do another colour mixing activity
• Do car roller painting using toy cars
• Sing "I Can Sing a Rainbow" - teaching colours, talking about rainbows
• Use the painting for wrapping paper (with the child's permission)