Balloon Painting

Fill the balloon with water and tie it.  Offer your child the balloon, a dish of paint, and some paper, and see what happens.  Your child might hold it by the knot and bounce it, or roll it around, or he might find another technique. 


Variations: 
To expand this activity, offer a second balloon filled only with air.  Your child can feel the difference  between them, and you can narrate his exploration, offering concepts such as light and heavy.  For more gross motor exploration with this, you can put the paper on the ground and attach a long rubber band or piece of elastic to the balloon knot.  Your child can swing and bounce the balloon while standing on the paper (best done outside!). 

What are we learning?
Children construct an understanding of their world in part by manipulating objects in different ways.  In addition to being an art project, this is a physics experiment.