Humpty Dumpty Egg Splat Painting

It is #RhymeTime again and our chosen Nursery Rhyme is Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again

Adam and I have been doing play activities together now for 22 months now and I can honestly say we have never laughed so much during an activity. Our Humpty Dumpty Egg Splat Painting was a huge hit with Adam (and me!).

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Resources for Humpty Dumpty Egg Splat Painting

* Eggs

* Ready Mixed Paint

* Permanent marker pens

* Cardboard boxes wrapped in white paper

* A sponge for printing

* Canvas

How to set up Humpty Dumpty Egg Splat Painting

Setting up the activity was straight forward. Over the past few days I had been cracking our eggs differently. I used a knife to tap the top off the egg and made a hole big enough for the egg to come out and broke away any remaining shell fragments. I rinsed the eggs in Milton and allowed them to dry before pouring in ready mixed Ready Mixed Paint.

I then used a permanent marker pen to add facial features to our eggs. We created 16 Humpty Dumpty eggs.

Next we needed a wall. I wrapped two cardboard boxes in white paper and used a sponge to print red bricks to create a wall effect. Once they were dried I placed them next to our canvas out in the garden. At first I couldn’t get the eggs to stand upright so I cut the tops off our volcanoes.

How to make Humpty Dumpty Egg Splat Painting

I sang the nursery rhyme to Adam and knocked over an egg when Humpty Dumpty fell off his wall. The paint inside the egg splattered across the canvas. It only took one demonstration before Adam was singing the nursery rhyme himself and pushing the eggs off of the wall.

Although the paint splatted against the canvas we also wanted to make Humpty Dumpty break into pieces. As the eggs didn’t break from the short height Adam took it upon himself to see if he could get the eggs to crack by throwing them down onto the canvas.

It worked well and was a great activity to develop his gross motor skills. However, it did result in some eggs missing the canvas and come hurtling towards me!

Paint was splatting onto the canvas and onto the grass whilst Adam was giggling away. My devious toddler kept trying to persuade me to sit close and close to the canvas. I was too busy laughing at Adams reaction to the activity when the red filled Humpty Dumpty flew towards me and covered my face in red paint! Adam obviously found this hilarious.

Any eggs that hadn’t completely cracked Adam picked up and repeated the process again and again. It was wonderful to see Adam engaged in messy play – although he only got one small dot of paint on him. If you want to avoid getting paint on your grass I would recommend placing a shower curtain underneath the canvas. It was suprising how long the 16 eggs lasted for, in between all the giggling.

Not only did we thoroughly enjoy the process of our Humpty Dumpty egg splat activity we also have a wonderful canvas painting to hang proudly in our house.