Gross Motor Art with Kitah Alef
Fly Swatter Painting
For the past year, Kitah Alef has been exploring art through gross motor art experiences. They have been presented with a variety of mark making provocations that stimulate gross motor development.
In this art experience the children used fly swatters as their paint brushes. Shades of purple, blue, and green paint were drizzled onto roll paper. The children then spread and blended the paint by smacking it with the fly swatter. The result was a combination of splatter painting and stamping.
The next step of the process was ripping up the dried painting into small pieces. The children then, using glue sticks, collaged the pieces of paper onto a large sheet of cardboard, creating a new composition.
Scraper Painting
The children used scrapers to move paint in shades of blue, green, and purple across rectangles of cardboard.
Each scraper had a different edge. Some had a smooth, straight edge while others were more angular and spiky, or rounded and wave-like.
The children mixed and blended the colors by dragging their tools across the page side to side and up and down.
Shaken Painting
Yet another gross motor painting experience for Kitah Alef. The children created shaken paintings. The children squeezed paint in shades of yellow, green, blue, and silver onto card stock.
Next, they shake the closed box up and down to move the paint around. The resulting pictures are marbled and streaked compositions.
Slide and Ball Painting
The children created paintings on the playground using paint and balls.
They first squeezed paint at the top of the slide, where a sheet of roll paper was attached.
They then rolled balls through the paint, down the slide.
The balls all varied in texture and size, making streaks and prints on the length of paper as they moved down the slide.
Rake Painting
In this experience, the children used rakes in place of paintbrushes.
They dipped small, metal rakes into bright colors of glittery gel paint. They then streaked the paint across rectangular pieces of cardboard, mixing and layering the colors.
This experience engaged the children’s gross motor skills and introduced them to a new tool.
watercolor spray paint
The children were offered bottles of watercolor in purple, teal, magenta, and goldenrod. They alternated spraying each color onto watercolor paper. Squeezing these spray bottles over and over helps build the muscles in the hands. The layering of colors had a tie-dyed effect.
