Painting with watercolors offers a wide variety of opportunities. You can set the paint out and let your preschooler’s imagination take over, creating whatever they’d like. Some kids struggle with artistic creativity. They don’t know exactly what is right or wrong and they want direction. There is no right or wrong way to create art, a little guidance or encouragement can go along way to creating something fabulous. Whether you are an artistic person or not, it’s easy to encourage your child, a good place to start is with patterns… simpler still, start with stripes and dots.
Start by preparing the watercolors to ensure the paint is easy to use. Then simply suggest or even demonstrate how to paint a line. Make more lines using different colors and watch your child take it from there. You can repeat the process with dots or any other shape type your child is able to create. For a more advanced activity, suggest an actual repeating pattern of colors or line sizes or both.
Once these pretty pages of color dry, try creating another project using the patterned paper pieces:
- Framed wall decor
- Greeting card
- Picture cut outs
- Gift wrap or gift tags
- Decoupage
- T-shirt transfer
- Book cover
This painting activity works well with other paint types such as finger paints or craft paints. Water colors allow for a transparent looking color so you can paint on top of a color with a new color and see what happens with color mixing, etc.
Encourage your preschooler to try different paint brush sizes, different amounts of paint, different colors and other options while they paint with their water colors. Help them explore the imagination and creativity they have overflowing inside.