Painted Egg Carton Bead Sorting

Who loves a good two-part activity for the kids? I usually don’t have time to dedicate multiple hours to activities in one single day, so breaking it up into different days usually works best for us for longer or more involved projects. For this activity, I actually let over a week go by before we got back to part 2! Each phase entertained the older kids (3 and 5 years old currently) for an hour, which was amazing!

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend waiting weeks and weeks between part 1 and part 2, the lag time didn’t diminish the excitement in our house like I thought it might. We kept the pained egg cartons on the counter because I was intending to finish part 2 much sooner than we actually did. They were easy enough to store, so it wasn’t a huge inconvenience.

This activity requires some simple craft supplies that you likely already have on hand, so save your egg carton from this week and get started!

Here’s what you need

• Egg carton. I saved one for each child that would be participating.

• Paint. At this age, we still use washable paint exclusively. Inevitably, we get paint in places that it shouldn’t be and I’m always very happy with how well this paint washes off with a wet paper towel. We don’t paint every day or even every week, so this set of paints has lasted 3.5 years. We are just now starting to throw out some of the bottles and I already have the larger 32-count set ready to go in our art supply storage area.

• Paint brushes. We love this set, but unfortunately most of the brushes have gone missing recently. I bought this set as an inexpensive replacement and have been happy with the brushes so far.

• Smocks. We always use smocks, even with washable paint. This set comes a 2 pack and has fun color options. I toss these in the washing machine when they get too messy and they have held up great for almost 2 years.

• Beads. I originally planned to use these beads for this activity, but somehow misplaced them during our massive basement reorganization project that is only half finished! Thankfully I was able to substitute these perler beads in without an issue.

Set up

Phase 1: 2-5 minutes

1. Save egg carton(s) and rip or cut off the top to avoid bumping or tipping unintentionally.

2. Pour paint into palette.

3. Set up bowl of water and a towel to clean brushes off between colors. I’ve tried to keep separate brushes for separate colors, but that usually ends up with mixing of colors and one child gets irritated. So now I like to have the kids clean their brushes and use their own paint palettes.

Phase 2: 1 minute

1. Dump beads into a bowl.

2. Get out the painted egg cartons.

Clean up

Phase 1: 3-5 minutes

1. Wash brushes and palettes in the sink. I toss our palettes in the dishwasher if they don’t rinse off completely and they have held up well.

2. Wash smocks as needed. I read that washing them in warm water helps keep them from getting brittle and ripping, so I toss them in on a gentle cycle and add some towels in to help cushion the tumbling.

3. Let egg cartons dry out of reach from the kids.

Phase 2: 1-2 minutes

1. Put beads back into a container or bag for later use. Pro tip: don’t lose them in your basement!

2. Save your egg carton, if you have the space, to repeat this activity. You could also use it for a different activity (come back next week for an idea) or pretend play.

I don’t know why, but paint is not my go-to activity for the kids. Maybe I anticipate it being messier than it actually is or maybe because my 3-year-old needed more supervision previously. Either way, I’ve only just recently been able to set up paint and look away for a few minutes.

I definitely love spending time with my kids and (sometimes) wish I could spend an hour sitting with them and painting, but that isn’t practical or realistic for me in this life phase. So you are not alone if you don’t have the capacity for super messy activities. I get it! I try to sprinkle in some mess when I can manage it, but don’t stress that it doesn’t happen very often.

Like I mentioned in this Colorful Fizzy Bin post, I am actively working on not interfering with or interjecting my opinions on how to make a painting or colorful project “better”. For kids, the process is the point! Who cares if the yellow is a little muddy from all of the color mixing or if the only color used is blue? My opinion on their art process does not matter one bit, so I keep my correcting thoughts to myself and enjoy the magic of watching their creativity.

First, we painted the egg cartons. I usually let each child pick any 4-6 colors they want when we do free choice painting. Today I wanted the egg cartons to somewhat match the beads we were planning to use, so I gave some color direction for picking out the paint. We got to have conversations about how to make colors lighter or darker and how to mix colors to make a new one.

I planned to have the beads out during the painting phase to help with color matching, but I couldn’t find them quickly. I try to fit these older kid activities in during Ellette’s nap, so I didn’t have a ton of time to search through the very disorganized basement. I still thought I knew where they were, but as you already know, that was not the case.

We let the egg cartons dry and planned to do the sorting part of this activity the next day, but decided to enjoy the warm weather as much as possible before school started. The cartons were easy to store for a few days and that gave me time to look for the beads. I still can’t find the original bag, but the Perler beads worked great as a substitute!

When it was finally time to begin phase 2, Brinly immediately started sorting by color without any direction. She was able to make decisions on how to organize even when the paint didn’t match the beads exactly. She LOVED this activity and I had to pull her away after 1 hour so we could eat dinner. I will probably set this up again for her sometime this week as a way to decompress when she gets home from school.

Peep her pink sunnies in the photo below! She cracks me up because she wears these constantly, even at 6:30 in the morning!

Vaila is currently 3 and needed a little more guidance, but still really enjoyed the sorting part of this activity. Her paint colors were not perfect matches to the beads, so it was a little more difficult for her to understand how to sort the colors. Even so, she was extremely intent on the sorting without any intervention from me for 30 minutes. She spilled the beads a few times and needed help reorganizing, but this gave her some great fine motor practice and color matching experience.

I didn’t snag any pictures, but Ellette actually woke up while the girls were still working. She loved feeling the beads in the bowl, but I only let her do that for a few seconds. She is very good at quickly putting toys or paper in her mouth right now, so I wanted to avoid any beads in the mouth incidents.

What I thought was really cool was how detailed Brinley was with her sorting. She made up new ways to sort and we could even do this with numbers in the future. She even figured out how to sort the pinks and orange beads in one bowl and the blues and greens in another bowl.

My favorite part of this activity was the no clean up! No water or sand to clean and the kids were responsible for putting the beads back where they came from. I just put the bowls in the dishwasher and kept making dinner.

This activity was full of fun and I hope you get a chance to try it with your little ones at home. As always, I appreciate each and every one of you that share these posts with friends through email or social media.

Be on the lookout for another activity involving an egg carton soon, so you might want to keep one handy! Drop a comment below if you like the 2-part activities. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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