Blow Painting for Kids
Let little ones explore a new way of painting with blow painting! It’s fun and easy and is a great way to work on essential skills.
Why Bother Blow Painting?
Facial and Fine Motor Muscle Development
Blow painting helps to strengthen mouth and hand muscles, which in turn helps with speech development, hand-eye coordination, and fine motor skills.
Cause and Effect
Preschoolers learn what happens when they blow on paint.
Hard breaths vs. soft breaths, the distance the straw is from the paper, the distance between paint piles, and color mixing are all wonderful causes and effects that little ones can experience in this activity.
Building Patience and Focus
Painting takes time. Blow painting takes a bit more because it isn’t as easy as moving a brush across paper. Taking deep breaths takes time and energy, making it so your little one can’t rush through it.
This article may contain affiliate links to products that may help you when homeschooling preschool.
Sensory Exploration
Feeling the straw, watching the colors mix, smelling paint in the air, and hearing their breath engage multiple senses in the process of blow painting.
Calming
To move the paint across the page, little ones must take a deep breath. Deep breathing is a wonderful way to calm a body down.
Watching the colors move and mix may be the sensory experience your little one needs to help calm them.
Creativity
While little ones are blow painting, they are using their creativity to make a masterpiece in a non-traditional way.
The colors chosen and how the paint is blown across the paper are wonderful ways for little ones to make their blow paintings their own.
Items Needed
*paint
*straw
*poster board or cardstock
Blow Painting How To
You may want to do this activity outside or somewhere you don’t mind having paint on it, just in case it goes all over. 😉
1. Talk with your preschooler about this activity. Take care to explain that the straw’s job is to blow air out (not to drink through).
2. Let your little one choose colors to add to the poster board. Picking primary or complementary colors will help prevent everything from turning brown (although that is a good lesson).
3. Place dabs of paint around the sheet. Place the dots close together so your little one doesn’t have to work too hard to get the paint piles to meet.
4. Have your little one blow out through the straw while holding the end of the straw close to a pile of paint on the paper.
5. Repeat blowing out through the straw near the paint to continue blow painting.
6. Try rotating the paper to get different piles to meet.
7. When satisfied, let the blow painting dry.
8. Hang up the masterpiece to enjoy.
Painting with Air
Blow painting is mesmerizing for little ones. Blow painting can be a much-needed calming activity for little ones, from taking deep breaths to moving the paint to watching the colors mix. Fingers crossed, it has these effects for your preschooler. 🤞
