Try some marble painting

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There’s also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help. 

Planning and setting up this activity

• You could run this activity over two sessions.

Running this activity

1. Gather everyone in a circle and ask if anyone has ever painted with anything other than a paintbrush before. They may have tried hand printing, potato printing or something else.
2. Explain that today you’ll be using marbles to make art.
3. Each group needs to have a tray or container, such as a washing up bowl.
4. Taking it in turns, the first person needs to place newspaper into the bottom of the container, then place their card onto. 
5. Next, blob paint randomly onto the card.
6. Add two or three marbles or bouncy balls to your container and roll them around in a circular motion.   
7. Keep moving the ball around, by lifting and moving around the container.
8. As the balls roll through the paint, they’ll leave trails. See what shapes you can male!
9. When they’re happy with the result, the person should carefully remove the balls and wash them.  
10. When finished, each person should simply remove and replace the newspaper in the bottom. 
11. The next person can repeat the steps to create their artwork.
12. What do the shapes look like? Monsters, a football game, a concert or a galaxy in space? People could also add to their marble painting, such as by adding glitter or sequins to the wet paint, or letting it dry and adding in details. You could also cut the artwork down to size and stick it to the front of a notebook or journal.