Painting With Sphero

When talking about using Sphero in the Art room, our first thought was to paint with them.  In our research of robots, we have seen Sphero used in paintings.  This was what connected this tool to the Art room initially. This is how we did it! 

We first decided we needed a frame to contain the Sphero when painting with it. I brought this up to my genius husband and he came up with this amazing solution.  By adding the notches to the boards, we were able to take apart and assemble with ease. 

We placed paper under the area where we would be painting and then rolled out the paper. The first day we taped it down to the floor but found that it was best to tape it to the frame.  The kids would sit on the paper and move it around, so taping it to the frame helped. 

From everything we read online, it appears that people just plop the Sphero in paint.  We wanted to give the Sphero a little protection so we wrapped them with Press'n Seal.  It helped to protect the Sphero from getting a lot of paint in the little grooves but it made the robot very sticky.  A little GooGone got rid of the adhesive and they ended up looking nice and clean again.  We did not put the wrapped Sphero on the charger because there is a slight heat that comes off from the charger.  We didn't want to melt the plastic (I'm not sure it would have, but we played it safe). We used Tempera Paint.  It was a perfect medium for this project. 

We placed a plastic bag down with tape to the paper.  This was the only place that we added the paint.  We found that it gave a lot of protection to the blobs of wet paint. We rolled out the paper once in the morning, allowed 5 classes to add to it, and then we let it dry like that over night.  We then removed the paper and did it all over again the next day, for 6 days so every student could have the opportunity.  

And then they painted... they laughed when they rolled the Sphero through the paint.  They loved every minute of this challenge.  Some students were very specific in driving the Sphero, and others just had fun watching to see where it would go with little to no thought on how to drive. ALL students had fun!! All students were engaged.