Marble Painting – More Than Just a Cool Piece of Art

Ever since I discovered Pinterest I have been bombarding my OT’s at work with ideas that look really fun and purposeful.  The idea I was the most excited about was the marble painting from Play Based Learning, so when one of the OT’s decided to try out this activity for a kiddo to encourage bilateral hand use because he doesn’t like to use 2 hands I was so excited to hear about it and see the final result!  Luckily it was a success as you can see from his finished art work.  And, even better the OT was able to realize other great skills this activity provided the opportunity to practice.  I thought I would share them:

• It worked on visual motor because he was tracking the marble as he moved it about the paper
• It worked on his ability to use a utensil because he was so excited to spoon the marble out of the paint onto the paper that he was actually willing to use a spoon – something that was not the norm
• It worked on grading movement because if he moved the bin to fast or made too large a movement the marble came flying out
• It also worked on variable movement because the tendency was for the child to want to move the box back and forth in one directional plane but then all he would get is a line on his paper.  This activity allowed them to work on diagonal and horizontal and vertical and circular motions to name a few.

Overall though, the best part was that the kiddo loved doing the activity and couldn’t wait to show his parents and didn’t want to let go of the project once it was complete!