Colorful Preschool Butterfly Art Painted with Marbles

Last Updated on October 25, 2021 by Rachel Cooper

Inside: Looking for a colorful preschool butterfly art activity? The wings on these butterflies are painted with marbles – a fun technique that involves lots of moving and balancing!

Marble painting is a favorite with our preschoolers. Perhaps that’s why this technique has been used in some of our favorite activities, such as black and white art and Valentine’s hearts.

The process is appealing to children because there’s lots of action going on. The marbles have to be dipped into the paint, then spooned onto the paper, and then the container has to be tilted back and forth so the marbles move.

It gets the entire upper body moving, especially if done while standing!

So, when I decided to use the marble painting technique for our butterfly art, I should not have been surprised at how successful it was.

Take a look!

Colorful Preschool Butterfly Art Painted with Marbles

What we used for this butterfly art:

Tempera paint in assorted colors (we had 4 different colors)
Marbles
Doll-peg clothespins
Pipe cleaners
Paint containers
A round container for the paper
White paper (I used diffusing paper, but you can use thin white paper or even the centers of round coffee filters.)
Spoons

Setting it up:

Cut the white paper to fit inside the pan. Make as many circles as you will need.
Fill paint containers about 1/3 full with paint and add marbles.
Place everything on a table.

Colorful Butterfly Art Painted with Marbles

Invite your children to use the spoon and scoop the marbles from the paint container, releasing them onto the paper.

The next part is optional: having a lid for the container.

I bought our containers at the dollar store and they came with containers. We first tried this activity with the lids on top of the containers. I thought perhaps it would keep everything in place.

The plus to having a lid is that the children can actually gently shake the container and the marbles won’t fall out.

However, our preschoolers were moving so quickly that we simply didn’t have time to keep putting the lid on.

But, after observing the activity, I realized they were doing quite fine without it.

Plus, having the container open allowed them to actually see the process and know when to move the pan and when to stop.

So we stopped using them. But, it’s still an option, especially if you are wary of stray painted marbles escaping. (Only 1 marble escaped during our session.)

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Below shows our set up with the children in action.

I love using our little Simplay3 table for these types of activities!

The children were having so much fun spooning the marbles in and out of the cups.

In fact, after awhile I realized that’s what they were loving most.

And then, when the activity was winding down, a couple of the last children at the table began pouring marbles from paint cup to paint cup. (By this point there really wasn’t much paint in them, so I let them continue.)