When plain old paints and paintbrushes have grown a bit stale, look no further than this novel project! This time around, a balloon itself is your “brush.”

To start, blow up balloons just slightly (you want your little one’s hand to be able to grab on).

I set Travis up with the balloons and several colors of paint on a well-covered surface. You can stick to a color palate (we used various shades of green), or go wild with vibrant primary colors or any shade in between.

It was neat to see the different effects we could produce with the balloon as our brush, whether making big blobs by pressing or streaks from rolling.

The marks almost looked feathery at times, very neat!

In complete honesty, Travis decided he didn’t like the activity much, since the balloon got his hand very messy with paint. His favorite part though was looking at the dried painting afterward, and discussing how we had made it!

For kids who do love making a mess (and being a mess), this is sure to be a huge hit.