Comb Painting

(Open Ended Play)

There is something about painting with colors that invite toddler’s imagination.

Materials:

-comb

-4 homemade paint colors

(1/4 cup flour, 1/4 cup water, mix together until no more lumps, divide into each color containers and add a few drops of food coloring)

-4 lids, turned upside down as paint color containers

-black and white pee-made collage

-tray

Instructions:

-present the materials to your toddler

-ask your toddler to pour/drip the paints

-ask your toddler to grab the comb and drag from side to side

-let him/her explore freely

Painting sessions with little human are much less about producing an end result and finished masterpiece than they should be about exploring materials in a hands-on way experimental. This fun play let kids use materials in a different way, satisfy their hunger of curiosity, investigating how to create patterns, feel textures and observing colour mixing.

We used hotel comb that we got from most recent holiday. Y took it and we finally found a way to benefit from an extra comb like this.

At first we did it together. She enjoyed tilting the paint container and letting it fall drip by drip. Once we had enough paint on the paper, I asked her to grab the comb and I helped her to brush it from far left to far right together. She was amazed with how the colours merged together in a beautiful marbled effect after the comb was dragged through. “Wow! Wow! Wooow!” she said.

I gave her another blank paper and freedom to explore with all the materials. She was so focused this time to let the paint drip and even scraping til the very last drop of the blue paint. Her hand reach is surely not as big as mine, so her stroke of comb was shorter. She pushed the comb rather hard to one side until its thicker end made some marking on the paint and paper which showed in a different pattern of comb than before when I assisted her.

She asked for a new blank paper. No more blue paint left, so she was experimenting with the other 3 colors. She forgot to use the brush, that was until I reminded her. She was moving from side to side this time so that she could make a longer stroke with the comb.

We had so few paint left on the last paper.

The fine comb still did create an interesting contrast of tiny lines though.

#yazookiddo #invitationtoplay #painting