After painting pasta yesterday, and seeing how much kids enjoyed it, I decided to do another painting session with them, this time, we have changed up our painting tools a little bit and made gummy and cork process art painting!

Today’s challenge for a sensory play was to use kitchen cupboard items and it brought lots of fun providing a new way of painting!
Supplies for Gummy and Cork Process Art
We used:
- muffin tin
- tempera paint
- corks
- rubber bands
- kitchen utensils
- tongs
- paper
- clear glass casserole
I have set up a painting area like shown on the picture below and waited to see which one will stumble on it first. Always fun to hear the question: “Mom, what’s that?” and “Can I play with that?”.
How to set up a painting space?
As you can see from the picture, I places the paint in a muffin tin, along with few corks with elastics, some without and couple elastics on their own, spoon, fork, wooden tongs and some other utensils from the kitchen.
Place the paper and tape to the bottom of the rectangle shaped casserole bowl.

Process Art is Fun!
Kids completely ignored black utensils and went for wooden tongs. They had fun trying to pick up cork using thongs and carry it from paint to a bowl. Corks are slippery even without paint, and with paint stuck all over them, they are super tricky to grab with tongs!
Most of the painting was done with corks and tongs, pushing corks around the paper with tongs or grabbing it and transferring to a clean part of a paper.

Then there was a question: “Mom, what are we going to do with gummy?” and I showed them how to use cork and transfer gummy in a paint and back to the paper. Of course, some hand work was also needed. Plus, later they tried to pick gummy with things. Now, that was an adventure in fine motor practice!

This picture was created using all the items from the tin: corks with and without elastics and elastics by themselves. Looks messy! Cork without gummy was the main reason why everything looks so fuzzy. So we decided to ditch corks without elastics and give it another try.
“Circles”, more ovals really, are painted using gummy. Other than that, what you can see on this painting is painted by pushing around corks with elastics.

Learning opportunities
Painting is not only fun, this kind of process art setup provides with learning opportunities as well:
- fine motor practice as kids work with tongs, place gummy on cork and more
- color recognition and learning about color mixing
- shape recognition
- eye & hand coordination – watching and doing and coordinating these actions
Looking for more fun things to do with your kids? We want to recommend you our new book – Learn with Play (150+ Activities for Year-Round Fun and Learning)! You will find inside easy to prepare activities for everyday fun as well for all seasons and holidays! Here is a preview for you:
What to Do Next?
- Try Splatter Art outside!
- Did you know you can make art with ice?
- Change up your art supplies and try something new!
- Make few stick puppets for imaginative play!

I can definitely see how this painting activity would develop motor skills. And it’s always fun to get a bit messy!
Yes! Messy is good! 🙂
Fun painting idea! Thanks for linking up at the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop! We hope you stop by again next week!
I love your ideas. You have inspired me to add some on your suggestions to my letter C activities. Just a suggestion, you might want to change thong to tongs. lol
Thanks, Adria
Hahaha! Good catch! Will change! Thank you!!!