Mirror painting is an activity we’ve been been to try for a while. Using different surfaces, textures or tools always helps to add an extra level of interest and keep the kids attention focused on simple activities like painting. Painting on mirrors is a wonderfully sensory experience, with the feel of the paintbrush on the shiny surface giving different feedback to the child than just plain painting on paper. Of course there is much more to explore visually too with the reflections.

We decided to make our mirror painting glittery by using gold glitter paint and adding glitter to our regular blue paint. The colours mix and swirl together really nicely with the silver reflective surface coming through from the mirror below too. This activity is very simple to set up if you have a spare mirror (use washable paint and it will come off afterwards, leaving you free to re-use that mirror again for another mirror painting session at a later date!) We used an old Ikea Pysslingar mirror which is not the biggest mirror ever, but it did have enough space for 3 children to work on it together and has the bonus of having no sharp edges as some mirrors may have.

As soon as the boys saw this activity they were all keen to try it out and it kept them entertained for a good while, particularly the younger two boys (2 and 4) – they were enthralled in painting on the mirror surface as if it was magic!

I did have a go myself and can understand why they liked it, it’s very relaxing! The glitter paint definitely added some extra appeal too.

We talked about how the colours mix and how the dark blue with sparkly gold looks like starry the night sky.

The shiny mirrored surface also lends itself really well to mark marking activities within the paint. We used the pre-painted mirror surface to mark out Arabic letters, exposing the mirror underneath. Here’s Mr Z’s alif.

The letter activity will work just as well with the English alphabet, numbers, shapes, or any other kind of markings that you are working on.

You might also like:

Arabic alphabet candles

Star and crescent printing

Potato masher painting

Don’t forget to pin for later: