Thursday, August 4, 2011

Bubble Wrap Painting and Shaving Cream Marbling - Reading Mural

Last summer, we made a floral reading mural to keep track of the books we read over the summer.  Every time we read a book, we would add a petal or leaf to the mural with the title of the book written on each petal or leaf.  We also added butterflies and a sun.  It was a very popular activity with C and R, plus it kept them writing (they wrote the titles) and reading all summer.

Creating a reading mural is on our Summer Bucket List again this year, but we didn't get to it until this week, so unfortunately, it won't have all of our summer reading titles on it.  Oh well, better late than never!

To create the background for our reading mural, I cut some waves out of poster board.  I put some blobs of blue, green, and purple poster paint on the surface and R painted the waves.


C wasn't in the mood to paint, so R did the whole thing.

Once she was done painting, we placed bubble wrap on top of the wet paint and she pushed on and stepped on the bubble wrap to create a bubble effect in the ocean waves.


I cut some fish shapes out of white card stock.  Then we decorated the fish using the shaving cream marbling technique.

I began by giving C and R a tray with shaving cream and a few squirts of acrylic paint.


They used popsicle sticks to swirl the paint (don't over-mix - you want the colors to maintain their individual identities!).


Once they were done swirling, they took the card stock fish shapes and pressed them in the mixture, then pulled them out and put them aside for a few minutes.


We typically wait at least ten minutes to let the color set, and then use a popsicle stick to scrape off the extra shaving cream.  I have posted this technique many times; it's always a favorite around here and the results are so pretty!  Sometimes we use food coloring instead of paint; both work wonderfully.


Each fish will represent one book read.  We will continue adding fish until our ocean is full.  Here is a sneak peek with just a few of the fish on the ocean waves background (before any book titles are written on the fish):


I love the contrasting colors!

You may have noticed that this reading mural is tiny compared to the one we made last year.  Well, my due date is five weeks away and I thought it was best to not be too ambitious with getting every book read on the mural.  If need be, we can always expand with more poster board waves and fish that may or may not be marbled!

If you want to see more marbling, check out the gorgeous fall leaves made by Little Wonders' Days by clicking here!

9 comments:

Jen said...

That is great!!! love how it turned out
We just use the list from summer reading programs- yours looks like more fun and motivating for sure!!

Anonymous said...

I absolutely love this idea! I am going to steal it for next year!

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

I was just trying to remember how many weeks you had left - it's coming up so quickly! I might borrow this idea for a fall reading mural.

Ticia said...

I'm actually about to do a poster board painting mural as well for the ocean. Great minds think alike.

Kelly said...

This turned out beautiful! I love the colors of your fish. Thanks for the blog mention too.
Little Wonders' Days

Debbie said...

I've been wanting to paint with shaving cream. We tried the bubble wrap but wasn't very successful.

MaryAnne said...

Very nice! I need to do marble painting with my kids - keep meaning to and keep forgetting!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

This is so lovely. I really want to do some project with shaving cream, except my husband has a beard :)

Sherri said...

This is a fantastic way to motivate the kids to read! your always so creative!