Jumping Jelly Bean Painting

I knew this activity would be a hit with my son, primarily due to two key ingredients...... sugar and jumping.

Painting using jelly beans and jumping.

What you need:

- lots of jelly beans!!

- a small person who likes jumping

- selection of non-toxic acrylic paints (I matched the colours to the jelly beans for added colour work)

- tongs (if your little one doesn't mind messy hands then fingers are just fine)

- a container with a lid

- white card or paper cut into the shape of jelly beans

- pink card to stick the finished jelly beans onto

- tape

Materials needed.

How it works:
Allow at least the first ten minutes for jelly bean mass consumption and taste testing.

Making sure he gets to try each flavour.... twice.

Then allow another ten minutes for excessive sugar rush fuelled excitement.

Just a slight sugar rush.

Eventually we were ready to paint. I stuck one of the white card jelly beans to the bottom of the container. I asked my son to take one jelly bean at a time, cover it with paint and then carefully place it on the white card jelly bean in the container. WARNING- obviously don't let your children eat the paint covered jelly beans! For the first one he chose to add one of each colour and matched the jelly bean colour to the paint colour.

Using the tongs to cover each jelly bean with paint.

Then he placed the jelly bean in the container.

Then came the really fun part that helped to burn off some of that excess energy. I put the lid on the container and told my son to pretend that he was a jumping jelly bean, making sure to hold onto the container tight. As baby sister was napping we stepped outside for this part as it was rather noisy with giggles and bouncing beans.

Shaking and jumping with the container.

He loved doing this and was so excited when I took the lid off the container and he saw his 'rainbow speckled' jelly bean that he had created inside. We completed this process three times. He enjoyed mixing the colour of jelly bean and colour of paint and putting more jelly beans in the container (and in his tummy) each time. We then stuck the three painted beans on a bright pink piece of card (see first picture).