Rain Painting ~ Housing A ForestHousing a Forest

Yesterday I introduced our exciting week long Play inspired by Nature series. I am having so much fun collaborating with Crystal from Growing a Jeweled Rose. Yesterday we both played in the MUD and had a blast. If you missed it you can find our mud posts here and here. Today we are both “singing in the rain, just singing in the rain” OK, I’m not sure I heard any singing, but we did have lots of fun Rain Painting.

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My kids love painting, so we decided to take it outdoors and paint with Mother Nature. Day 2 of Play Inspired by Nature series ~ Rain Painting. We have done this before, and it is always a hit. We actually experimented with 5 different painting mediums to see which we like the best.

Rain painting with Broken water color cakes ~ We used a cheap watercolor set, I think found at the dollar store.

The kids popped the cakes out the the container and then broke them into little pieces with a hammer. This was my sons favorite part:) They placed our in a baggie to try and contain all the broken pieces.

The kids sprinkled the watercolor bits onto a water color paper and set it out in the rain.

After a while, I was surprised that the watercolors did not run and bleed more. So we placed a piece of plastic wrap over the entire paper and proceeded to squish the colorful bits. They had softened in the rain, and the kids really enjoyed watching the colors squish and spread under the plastic. We may try it again with a different brand of watercolors to see if we can get better results.

Rain Painting with Powdered Tempera Paint ~ Powdered Tempera Paint is relatively inexpensive, and is really easy to use.

Instead of mixing it with water to make paint, we sprinkled it onto our paper dry. As the rain drops hit the powder, it turned into paint.

It gave a very textural look to the painting. I think it would look great in a rainbow of colors! Just make sure to sprinkle the paint lightly. The larger clumps did not work as well as the thin sprinkled areas.

Rain Painting with Washable Markers ~ This is one of the easiest ways to paint in the rain. All you need is a few markers, a piece of heavy paper and some imagination. The rain will blur and soften your image as the color bleed and run together.

Rain painting with Watercolor Crayons ~ I have posted about my love for watercolor crayons before. Since they also bleed when wet, we thought it would be fun to see what they did in the rain.

Simple sharpen your watercolor crayons with a pencil sharpener and sprinkle the shavings onto your paper and let the rain do the rest.

I love how the colors pooled together. Notice the larger “spots”, they were created with larger chucks of watercolor crayons.

Rain Painting with Food Coloring ~ This is how we have painted in the rain before. We always have food coloring on hand so it is our go to method.

We have found it works best if the paper is wet when you apply the food coloring. So we took our paper and food coloring outside. Once the rain soaked the paper, the kids dropped food coloring onto it.

They love picking up the tray and watching the colors swirl and mix.

While the kids were waiting for the rain to do its magic, they hit the streets with chalk. Drawing with chalk on a wet sidewalk is one of our favorite rainy day activities.

Chalk takes on a whole new texture when wet and the colors are twice as vibrant.

If you are still looking for more ways to play in the rain and stomp in puddles, check out our Rainy Days, Clouds and Puddles posts. There are lots of outdoor rainy day play ideas, along with a fun science experiment.

What is your favorite way to Play in the Rain?

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Make sure to stop by Growing A Jeweled Rose and check out Crystals Rainy Day Activities ~ Puddle Play. Her girls always have a great time stomping and getting creative with puddles!