Apple Salad Spinner Paintings

Salad spinner paintings = fun for all ages

When I taught college, one of the courses I taught was entirely on how to teach Art and Science to kids (the dream college class). Each week, I led my adult students in many activities and they would always lose their minds over the salad spinner art.

Art projects are rarely (if ever) just for little kids. When doing these types of projects, make one (or seven) yourself, too!

🍎 Looking for more apple projects? These are fantastic:

• Torn Paper Apples
• Apple Stamp Process Art
• Apple Science with Baking Soda & Vinegar
• Apple Washing Bin

Materials

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• Salad spinner – this works with any salad spinner, but we especially love the ones from Ikea
• Red, yellow, and green paint
• White paper circles – we use the inside part of white paper plates or thick white paper cut into circles
• Scissors
• Brown paper
• Green paper
• Glue

How to make salad spinner art

1. Lay a white paper circle into the base of the salad spinner.
2. Invite your child to add paint to the paper circle. 
3. Once there is enough paint to your child’s liking, put the salad spinner lid on and spin, spin, spin!
4. Remove the lid and examine the paper circle (this is the best part). 
5. If your child wants to add more paint onto the paper circle, let them go for it. Sometimes our students love it just the way it is after the very first spin, and some like adding paint two or three times per paper circle.
6. Remove from the salad spinner and let it dry.
7. Cut a stem from the brown paper and a leaf from the green paper and glue them onto the backside of the apple.

Repeat 700,000,000 more times.

💡 Teacher Tip: Make sure to have lots of circles prepped and ready to go because kids could make these for hours. I’m not even overselling it.

How does a salad spinner work?

The short answer: science. 

Whenever I have a science question, I call my big-brain-genius-scientist friend Mike and he breaks it down for me like I’m a preschooler. (If I’m ever on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and I have one phone call…I’m calling him.)

Salad spinners work well for art (and cleaning lettuce) because of both centrifugal and centripetal forces. When the salad spinner is spinning around, centrifugal force is what pulls the paint from the paper to the sides of the container. 

When the paint hits the side of the container, it stays put and stops moving because of centripetal force. 

After doing this a few times, kids will quickly learn that the best strategy for getting the most paint on their paper circles is by adding the paint to its center.

Because of centrifugal force, the paint will move outward, so if the paint is only added to the perimeter of the paper, it will not add much color to the piece. 

Yay, science!

Salad spinner paintings are fun for hours

These are something that we make and share every Fall, and we bet you will be saying the same thing, too.