The Possibilities of Paint - Ideas for At Home

Let's talk about paint!


For some people, the idea of painting at home with their young child is exciting. For other people, it is intimidating. For almost everyone, the word "messy" probably comes to mind.

At the same time, part of what is wonderful about paint is its possibility for expression. The exploration of gesture, color, and (especially with thicker paints) texture is a beautiful outlet for anyone (not just children), and can be an excellent way to center ourselves in the moment. This can lead to messiness, but, to me, the value of what is at work behind the messiness far outweighs the momentary stress of having to clean up a painty child.

So how do you set up paint at home in a way that feels manageable while still allowing your child freedom to actually explore the material? What if you don't have a ton of art supplies lying around? How can I be a part of my child's paint experience without taking it over?

Let's talk about these things!


Minimizing Mess

What can I handle?
Before setting up, think a bit about how much "mess" you feel comfortable with. Are you willing to risk some paint getting on the floor or a cabinet? What about paint getting on your child/their clothes/your clothes? Answering these questions honestly can help you decide what sort of experience you want to curate.

Choosing a setting:
A few options for setting up include...
- seated at a table
- in a dedicated space on the floor 
- outside (if it is warm enough and an outdoor space is available)
- in the tub (for super easy clean-up)
- at an easel or upright space (if you don't have an easel, you can take paper onto the refrigerator, kitchen cabinet, or wall)

Selecting your wardrobe:
No matter what the set-up, I would suggest that you (the adult) wear clothes that you don't mind getting painty!
For your child, you can choose between stripping to a diaper or undies OR putting on some paint-friendly clothes (either their own clothes that you don't mind getting messy or - my personal fave - an oversized t-shirt).

Protecting surfaces: 
Whether you are using a table or the floor, it is helpful to have something underneath your painting area to both protect whatever surface your painting on AND to define the space visually. Some possible materials to use for covering your floor or table include:
- a canvas dropcloth
- a table cloth
- a tarp
- a sheet
- large sheets of newspaper or other paper
- a towel (less ideal for table due to the thickness)
- parchment paper or plastic wrap (for table)

Prepare for clean-up:
It is helpful to set up near a bathroom or kitchen in order to be close to the sink, but whether or not this is possible, you can still be ready for clean-up by keeping these things close by!
- damp washcloths (some children might want one nearby to use as they go)
- a bowl or bin to put paint supplies in when finished (add water and soap and you now have a water activity!)
- a towel (to wrap up a messy kiddo)


Collecting Supplies: Recipes, Inspiration, and More


Paints
If you have washable tempera paint or watercolor paints (either liquid watercolor or a palette of dry color), these are excellent options to use at home. If you don't have either of these, never fear - you can make your own paint! Both of these paints are thick and fun to use for textural explorations. They will last for a few weeks if refrigerated. Offer them in small cups or bowls, in an ice cube tray, or straight onto the paper!

No-cook Flour + Salt Paint
-Mix together 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of salt.
- Slowly mix in 1/2 cup of water.
- Once smooth, divide into containers and add food coloring or liquid watercolor for color.

Cooked Finger Paint
-Stir 1/2 cup of flour with 1 cup of water in a pot over medium heat until it becomes a paste-like consistency and begins to pull away from the pot.
- Add a pinch of salt.
- Add 1/4 cup (or more as needed) of cold water to get your desired consistency.
- Divide into containers and add food coloring or liquid watercolor.

Painting Tools
Although brushes are the traditional tool for painting, they are by no means the only thing you can use! Here are a few other ideas for things to set out with your paint:
- cups or jars, spoons, and popsicle sticks for mixing colors
- leaves, flowers, pinecones, rocks (to use as paint tools or be painted on!)
- chopsticks, q-tips, sticks, combs, and forks for making lines through thick paint
- lids, spools, and other loose parts to use as stamps
- toy vehicles to make tracks through paint
- cotton-balls
- coffee filters
- sponges (as is or cut into shapes)
- droppers
- squeeze bottles
- and fingers of course!

Parent as Partner

So your paint experience is all set... but what should YOU do as your child paints? Here are a few suggestions:
- Paint on your own paper or collaboratively (if your child is so inclined) while echoing your child's movements - let them be the teacher! 
- Paint nearby to offer simple suggestions for how to use the materials (such as how to drag a comb to make lines, press a painted flower onto paper to make a print, or create a pattern using different colors or shapes). 
- Assume the role of documentarian and prop master - focus on taking pictures (and even taking notes if you want to try it!) and having extra paint, tools, and paper at the ready.
- Start in the abstract rather than jumping in to representational paintings (this can easily distract children from their work as they become more invested in what you are doing).

A few tips if children want you to paint for them or get discouraged because "yours is better":
- Gently say that you are not going to paint for them, but would be happy to show them how you did a certain technique for them to try. Walk them through it, with lots of encouragement. Then find something that you would like them to teach you how to do.
- Remind them that you have lived a lot longer than them and have had a lot more opportunities to practice! This is a great opportunity for them to start practicing, too.

**Also, check out these posts for preschool, toddler, and infant parents!**

Be well and enjoy!
Katie & Nova

Talking and Joining In: Tips for Preschool Parents

How should I act when I join my preschooler in the Studio? 

How can I be a part of their exploration without disrupting their investigation? 

Here is our Center’s culture around

talking about children’s work and taking part in the activity

in a child-centered way.

Talking about children’s work

It can be tempting to ask, “What is it?” However, the “what” is often less important than the “how.” Chances are, if a child is working on something representational, she will tell you about it even if you use open-ended questions. A great way to understand a bit more about what the child is thinking is to spend some time watching them work, identifying aspects of their process or painting that you find particularly interesting, and following with observations and questions like:

“How did you make so many different marks with the same paint?”

“You added a new color! What happens when it touches the others on your paper?”

“I’m so curious about that! Can you tell me more?”

Joining in the activity

Art materials can be so enticing, you just want to play  with them, too! The trick is, how can you join in alongside your child without the focus shifting to what you are doing rather than what they are doing? By turning the attention of the child to what we as adults are capable of, we intrude on their experience of the material. This can feel disempowering when their young hands can't make the perfect shape the way an adult's hand can, or when their idea becomes secondary to yours. So, instead…

Take a moment to look at the children’s work. What do you find most interesting? Ask the child whose artwork you examine, “How did you make this shape? Can you teach me?”

Notice the way the child is moving the brush, and use that as a guide for how to move yours. “I want to try swirling my brush around and around, just like you.”

If a child asks you to paint or make something for them, say, “I want to see how you would paint one. What shape do you think we need first?” 

How do you think these ideas compare to the ways in which you talk and interact with your child around art activities at home? Are there any pieces of this you might try to use? 

Similar posts are available for parents of infants and toddlers.

Building Habits of Mind

“We’re real artists.”

The Studio can be many things to many people. For Preschool 2, it became a place to explore and practice painting. We started out with watercolors, which allowed us to practice washing our brushes between colors and mixing colors together in the empty spaces on our palettes. Some children continued with watercolors for many sessions, experimenting with what it looked like to draw with sharpies before adding color. Other children explored acrylic and tempera paints, while still others tried out oil pastels alone and in combination with watercolors.

After so much time to experiment, practice, and refine their skills, these children were coming to understand the principles of these media just as artists do. With this in mind, we, the teachers, decided to offer up a provocation around the idea of taking time on a painting or drawing, the way artists do. In the end, all of the children spent at least two Studio visits working on their piece, and many requested a third time to finish. At the beginning of our second session with our paintings and drawings, we held group critiques. Children had a chance to share what they liked about each other’s paintings, ask questions about them, and provide their peers with suggestions about how to make their paintings even more beautiful (which the artist could choose to incorporate if they wished). Here are a few examples of the final, finished work of the children, alongside the words of their peers from the critique session. 

IAN’S PAINTING: My House and Family with a Rainy Sky

Ariv: I like the house. I like the roof, because it’s a different kind of shape.

R: I like the Christmas tree, even though it is blue, not green.

M: I like the people, because it reminds me of my family.

R: Why did you paint the sun blue?

Ian: Because it’s beautiful and someone can see that.

Ariv: Why is the Christmas tree blue?

Ian: I saw a Christmas tree outside and is blue. I have in my house.

Ariv: He should work on the clouds. [They were just black at the time.]

R: And add some umbrellas for the rain.

GAIA’S PAINTING: A Swirl and a Person

J: I like the snake… it’s like a sleeping snake.

Gaia: It’s not a snake, it’s a road.

Nina: I think I like the girl, because Gaia painted the inside and not the outside.

Katie: I wonder what you will add to your painting now.

Gaia: I will add more colors.

NINA’S PAINTING: Houses and a Castle along a Road with a Story about a Princess who Lived There

Gaia: I like the flowers. I like that she did two of these same.

[B. and J. point to the flowers, too.]

J: I think you could paint that sun.

ARIV’S PAINTING: A Truck, a Rocketship, a Stop Sign

R: I like the stop sign and the yellow in between.

M: I like the green part, because my mom likes green.

R: What is the yellow?

Ariv: That’s to keep the wheels together.

R: Why is it not attached to the truck?

Ariv: It’s magic and the car is using it.

R: Why are there little thingies inside the wheels?

Ariv: Those are telephones.

R: Spikey ones?

Ariv: Those are… they keep strangers from coming in.

Katie: I wonder if you are going to add something new.

R: Like people.

Ariv: No. I might make the hands very long on accident.

R: Just remind yourself you need short hands.

Sometimes, the Studio is about learning a new technique or discovering a new material. Sometimes it is about exploring a particular theme or idea. I also see it as a place for children to expand their ways of thinking about the world and about their place in it. It is a place where we are given uninterrupted time to investigate something very closely, and so it is also a place where we can practice and hone our skills as investigators. To me, this indicates the refining of “habits of mind,” which are defined by Arthur Costa as “a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known… It suggests that as a result of each experience in which these behaviors were employed, the effects of their use are reflected upon, evaluated, modified and carried forth to future applications.”

In the instance of the Preschool Two painting and pastel exploration, we began by building our understanding of the materials themselves – acquiring a set of particular “tools” that could be drawn upon and referenced in future. We then moved towards the practice of planning out our work – thinking about what we wanted to represent before we began and what elements were important to include. We then began to develop an understanding of our artistic creation of an extended, ongoing process that could draw inspiration from all around us. Our paintings were not simply the result of sitting down to paper and paint or pastel, they were the product of hard work, of thought and inquiry, of evaluation and re-evaluation, of our own ideas as well as the ideas of others. Children developed new means of extending their work, and they began to look at it in a more reflective way. If a child reached a point where they felt “done” working, rather than moving their piece straight to the drying rack, they took some time to walk around, looking to the work of their peers and the beauty in their environment for inspiration. During critiques, children listened respectfully to the comments and questions of their peers, and they felt able to incorporate the suggestions they were given as they saw fit. In turn, the children offering their opinions on another’s work seemed to be really thinking about the artwork before them.

“We’re real artists,” B. said during his second session with his painting. I do feel that this process of returning to and re-examining our work with care has helped to foster many of the habits of mind employed by artists, but I also believe that these practices will be useful to the children in many future instances where “the answers are not immediately known.” I believe that one of the miracles of art – in its viewing or its making – is its ability to inspire us to look more carefully and with deeper intention at the world around us, and I felt that these young artists were experiencing this alongside me during our visits together.

What habits of mind do you feel the children were employing through this experience?

What habits of mind do you feel are most helpful or important to you in your life?

                                                                 

Reference: Costa, A. & Kallick, B. Describing 16 Habits of Mind. Retrieved from http://www.instituteforhabitsofmind.com/resources/pdf/16HOM.pdf  

How did you do that painting? Part II

When Monica (one of our Preschool Two teachers) and I decided to offer a splatter painting provocation to her Studio group, I suggested that we invite an “expert” on the subject from Preschool One. A. volunteered to join us, and together we read some parts of my documentation of Preschool One’s splatter-painting session. The children then examined the other splatter paintings, offering their thoughts about how it had been made before A. told them a little about his experience.

L: “Maybe they put paint on the paper and then they put the paper on one of those [canvases].”

J: “I think they did that they used a paint brush and then put paint on.”

A: “We just standed up and splattered it on.”

Monica: “What did you splatter on?”

A: “Paint. We did it like this.” [He swoops his arm back and forth].

Monica: “With your hand?”

A: “No, with a paintbrush.”

We examined the canvas we would use.

Nina: Wow, feel this!

Katie: Please be gentle as you touch it.

A: Yeah, or else it will break through.

Nina: It’s smooth and ticklish.

A: It’s a little dirty. [We turn the canvas over to see the wooden frame.]

Nina: It looks like a window.

A: It’s F’s symbol.

Next, I asked if there was anything we should keep in mind as we splattered our paint.

A: When you put some paint on your paint brush, don’t get your paint on the walls.

L: Don’t splatter it too high or it could go in someone’s eye.

J: You should keep your eyes closed like this.

We moved onto painting, needing only a few reminders about the specific technique we were trying today. 

A: It’s making bumps on it.

Gaia: Oh! I got paint on my foot.

A: It’s okay. Katie will put some water later…. That’s gonna be a splatterfoam!

Gaia: There’s a lot of light blue.

A: A big flop just came off!

J: I see green and blue and purple and yellow.

We examined our painting together:

A: “Look at that one. It looks like a really big brown river.”

Nina: “It reminds me of a big rainbow.”

L: “It reminds me of a big, humungous, huge color.”

Gaia: “It reminds me of a big, humungous rainstorm.”

Finding that the corners needed work, we focused our efforts on them during our last few minutes painting.

What does the experience of such a painting project provide?

What does the experience of such a painting project provide?

On the one hand, it offers a chance for children to gain a new perspective about paint. These children have a lot of practice using paint at a table, touching the brush (or a hand being used as a brush) to paper. Splatter painting (in the style of Jackson Pollock at least) involves a canvas set out on the floor, which the artists move around with their brushes poised above but never touching it. There is a new layer of kinesthetic movement added, but also a different sense of cause and effect. You can aim your brush towards a certain part of the canvas; you can move your arm in different motions to change the appearance of the paint; but you don’t have the same control as when you actually touch your brush to the surface you are painting. Each movement has the potential to surprise and excite its maker.

On the other hand, there is the collaborative nature of the work. Everyone is sharing the same jars of paint. Everyone is sharing the same space for painting – they must keep track of the many other bodies at work as they move around the white rectangle of the canvas. Everyone is conscious of where their paint is going, making sure not to “splatter it too high,” as L. said.

One piece of this collaboration, too, is the development and sharing of expertise. In this case, A. took on the role of the expert in the fullest sense. He had so much to share about the process and about the painting as it was created. Having been there for both of his experiences with this style of painting, I noticed that A. had a lot of insights about the way the paint looked and moved that he had not necessarily voiced the first time around. The moment where he told Gaia not to worry about the paint on her feet also showed how aware he was of his fellow painters and how eager he was to share what he knew with them. I am sure that the other children gained a lot thanks to A’s presence, but I also felt that A. gleaned a great deal from the opportunity to not only make use of what he had learned before but also to share it with others.

What differences do you notice between the two documented painting sessions with different groups?

What do you think children learn from being the teacher or the “expert”? How is this different from their learning in other roles? 

 

How did you do that painting?

On January 28th, two PTCC alumni – T. and A2 – joined E., Theo, A., and M. of Preschool One in the Studio. The subject of the group’s collaboration was to create a new, big splatter painting together. T. and A2 were experts at this, since they had made one such painting before, which now hangs in the Studio.

The impetus for this project came from Ian, a teacher in Toddler One South. Ian had asked me if any children might be interested in creating another beautiful splatter painting that he could hang up in his home. I knew that many Preschool One children were curious about the painting, so I talked to the Preschool One teachers about the idea. They then offered it to the children, who agreed to take the job. They were excited to try out this new technique, and T. and A2 agreed to come and teach it to them. Serena (a Preschool One teacher who had also taught T. and A2 the year before) helped to arrange the meeting.

The afternoon visit began with a conversation about the painting hanging in the Studio and how it had been made.

Theo. : “How did you do that painting?”

E: “With feet?”

T. & A2: “No!”

T.: “With paint and brushes.”

A2: “And glue.”

T.: “We splattered the paint.”

A2: “We moved it around.”

T.: “We moved it fast.”

We then took a moment to feel the canvas that we would be painting on.

A.: “It’s soft. It makes me go to sleep.”

Theo: “It’s hard, too.”

Serena: “Look at what is underneath.”

(She lifted the canvas so we could see the other side).

E.: “Wood!”

With these conversations done, it was time to take action! A2 and T. demonstrated how to apply the paint, scooping their brushes into the paint jars and waving them over the canvas. Dots and strings of paint appeared on the white surface.

M., Theo, E., and A. joined in, adding new drips and new colors of paint. It took a little practice to add paint without actually touching the canvas with the paintbrush.

Theo: “That looks kind of messy.”

E.: “I’m doing like scooping it.”

T.: “It’s like exploding fireworks.” 

After fifteen minutes of steady painting, we all took a step back to look at our painting. Theo's verdict?

“It doesn’t look done yet.” We asked the children what parts of the painting needed more work. Several of the artists identified one corner that had less paint than the rest, so we agreed to focus our efforts there. We also discussed what new colors we should add. E. suggested that our painting needed some red, so we poured some fresh red paint for the next round of work.

We returned to painting, working together to add more paint in the more empty areas.

As he worked, T. observed of their painting technique, “You can’t control the paint. The paint controls itself.” 

Although he was not able to come down while the artists were working, Ian came to look at the painting not long after they left. “This is so cool! I love it,” he declared. “I’ll have to come by to say thank you!” 

TEACHING, DOING, THINKING, LEARNING

What a wonderful opportunity this was! Not only did the Preschool One children learn more about the painting that has so often piqued their curiosity, but they also had a chance to try their hand at making one themselves.  In addition, the project opened up possibilities for collaboration (not only with fellow classmates, but with older “experts”), as well as for a growing knowledge of their current PTCC community (by creating this artwork for a teacher that many of them did not know before they began the work).

This experience also made me think about the multiple layers involved in learning about something. In some instances, like this one, there is an element of “teaching” involved. A2 and T. both did a great job of teaching the children about their process, answering questions, explaining their technique, and then demonstrating it for the younger children. However, the act of “doing,” of trying this out for yourself, is equally important. You won’t necessarily realize what it means to “move it around fast” until you have a brush in your hand. In addition, I felt that our conversation as we worked, as well as our break to examine and discuss our work part-way through, showed the added layer of “thinking” – thinking about what we were doing, how we were doing it, and what we could do better. To me, it would seem that the real learning occurred at the interstices of these three processes. Together, they made the experience powerful. These children were at once learning about and carrying on a past tradition, exploring paint and its application in a fun and visceral way, and reflecting on their work like true artists. If any one of these elements had been removed, some of the meaning would have been missing.

Where else do you see a sense of community being built in the Studio and in our center?

What learning experiences have stuck with you throughout your life? Were all of these elements – teaching, doing, thinking – a part of them?