A good outdoor activity for children is mop painting. Start out by purchasing inexpensive mops at the dollar store. Next you will need to round up some food coloring or other paints. Acrylics will work for older children, but due to the EXTREME messiness of the painting, a water soluble paint is a better choice for younger kids, opt for watercolors or washable tempera.

Three colors are plenty, choose primary red, blue and yellow. These colors will blend and create the secondary colors.

Gather three deep containers. Add water and large dollops of paint or food coloring. Combine the water and paint with the mops.

Freezer paper is the perfect canvas. A large clipboard is a good choice for stabilizing the paper. If you don’t have a clipboard any hard, flat surface will do. Lean your board and paper against a pole or chair. Remember, this is a messy project, stay away from anything you don’t want to be splattered.

Now for the fun part, dunk the mops, drain excess water back into the container, and throw that paintbrush mop like a spear at the paper. Oh my, what fun we had creating these works of art.

Dribbling is also a great way to add paint. We found that the secret to beautiful paintings was to leave about a quarter of the paper white. Too much paint and all the pretty marbling and blending colors combine into an unattractive tan or brown.

Beautiful! What a great effect. We decided our finished paintings would make terrific wrapping paper. I will iron it when it is dried out completely and roll it onto the cardboard tubes.

Can you tell we had a good time?

A final word of advice: have a place for washing off prepared before you start. A wading pool filled with bubble bath worked great for us.