I got a few questions about painting with kids after writing my recent post about painting with toddlers and preschoolers, so I thought I would write about how painting works at our house.
I find that even kids who stay away from most crafting tend to enjoy paint. Painting is a wonderful sensory experience, involving four senses: touch, sight, smell, and hearing. I love vibrant paints for kids, and usually buy these Crayola washable paints (affiliate link) because they include beautiful colors and have a gouache-like texture, and wash about of everything. Watercolor paper (affiliate link) makes for especially beautiful paintings, but most of the time my kids paint on plain old printer paper, which – unfortunately – bunches up a bit as the paintings dry.
I have seen a lot of neat artist study activities you can do, and my son did several when he was in preschool, which I adored. When we paint at home, though, I tend to give my kids a bunch of paint and set them free to create whatever they like. Sometimes they get messy, like my son above and my eight-year-old’s more controlled handprints earlier in this post.
My older kids usually get free reign with colors, but sometimes I limit them for my younger kids when I want a particularly pretty end result – like Anna’s painting above.
Four-year-old Lily is very focused on color mixing at the moment, and her paintings reflect that – they are color studies, rather than representations of objects or stories.
Six-year-old Johnny has been drawing bridges ever since we went into San Francisco, and it was fun to see that transfer over to his painting.
Eight-year-old Emma surprised me by starting off with this still life of a tomato. She even painted a shadow!
She also painted a couple cats and this adorable cat, before moving onto more abstract work:
Can you spot the musical notes?
I also love this piece, which she made for one-year-old Anna, imitating the techniques Anna uses:
Do your kids enjoy painting? Do you remember painting as a kid? I remember my mom had tiny little tins that looked like miniature bread pans full of paint. We loved it when she would cover the table with newspaper and pull out those tiny tins of watercolor paints!
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
Great post! Brings back lots of memories of when my children were quite young, and how much they enjoyed painting.
Lovely pieces of art!
Thank you MaryAnne – this is such a great post and I loved looking at all the paintings – just beautiful!
Thank you, Jody! I think I need to get my kids some more proper watercolor paper to do their paintings justice!
I think you’re right- even my boys who normally don’t get as excited about crafts, LOVE painting! Tell your daughter that we loved her paintings:).
What a gorgeous gallery of your children’s paintings!
Thank you, Elisa! I love their paintings.
My kids love to paint, and I really need to get it out more often. Maybe I’ll add that into our Friday game day.
I go through cycles of pulling out the paint and leaving it put away, but the kids love it when the paint is out!
When I was teaching preschool years ago we used to clear a table and allow 2-3 kids at a time paint right on top of the table. Since it’s more of a sensory activity they never really cared about any pictures they would make with the fingerprints. During the summer in our art camp we take a table outside and just let the kids paint with shaving cream. (Wearing bathing suits)
What fun! We like to paint on cardboard outside in the summer time – like this: https://www.mamasmiles.com/cardboard-canvas-2/
These are beautiful paintings! Strangely, my daughter doesn’t enjoy painting much – perhaps because of set up and clean up involved in the painting. For several days now I am offering her paints and even offer to paint with her, but she is not at all interested. She is only interested in painting on clay or working with clay, but not on paper.
Love all the lovely artwork! Lily is mixing colors so beautifully!!
Checked out your post after seeing your message on Mia’s blog. My daughter is an adult now, but I didn’t know you could do so much with finger paints. I enjoyed looking at the various level of sophistication in your children’s artwork. Great post.
We love any excuse to get the paints out in our house!