Pendulum Art

This week at home and for my weekly art class with our classical conversations group, I did pendulum painting! It was very easy, cheap and lots of fun.

Materials for the pendulum:

Water bottle
White glue screw top lid
Hot glue
Scissors
Duct tape
Hole punch
String

Materials to paint:

Large butcher paper or poster board
Watered down paint

First take the water bottle and cut the bottom off. Then hot glue the white glue top to the water bottle top (lid removed). When the hot glue has dried, use duct tape to reinforce this seal around the white glue lid so no paint leaks. I wrapped the tape several times around mine.

Next I used two pieces of duct tape inside and outside on both sides of the bottom of the bottle to reinforce where I was going to punch holes for the string to hang the bottles. Then punched holes and tied string on either side. I used a lot of string because we hung this from a tree.

Then hang it from something high like a tree branch, until it is about 8-12 inches off the ground. Place large paper or poster board under the pendulum, I used butcher paper at home and then poster boards cut into quarters at CC. Then fill with watered down paint (if it is too thick it won’t run through) but make sure when filling the glue lid is twisted to closed. My paint needed to be put through a fine sieve after watering down because of some small globs in it would’ve blocked the nozzle.

We used fall colors yellow, orange, red, green and brown for this project since its the beginning of fall. When the bottle had paint I unscrewed the glue top and we took turns making the pendulum spin in circles, or in lines. The kids loved it! I can be messy so I suggest washable paint!

This was so much fun and the kids learned about pendulums also. My favorite learning is when they don’t realize they are being taught because they are having too much fun! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Johanna