After looking at my children's assortment of bouncy balls (all from the giant machine at Old Navy and all used to bribe my children for good behavior while I shop) just sitting in the bottom of a bin on there bedroom shelf, I set about thinking how we could put these to use. When I saw the empty box in the recycle pile, my idea clicked: bouncy ball painting.
We used a box (paper box size or something with taller sides), paint, and bouncy balls. Easy, messy, and fun.
Two observations: with paint on them, the bouncy balls don't actually bounce. The kids would throw them down and then the balls would roll to the side of the box. Despite the fact that the bouncy balls didn't bounce after thrown, we still got a cool splatter effect when the balls were thrown down and rolled. Since the bouncy balls didn't bounce as I thought they might, this wasn't as messy as I expected it to be. I had visions of the balls bouncing all around my kitchen, getting paint everywhere. The messiest part was the mini's hands and if they happened to drop the bouncies on the floor. Which brings me to my second observation: the bouncy balls got very slippery once they had paint covering them. This made the boys quickly end their painting sessions, but Elizabeth (19 1/2 months) seemed to love this little quirk in our painting experiment.
