• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Wonderbar

Creative art instructions for kids!

  • Welcome
  • Classes
    • Art Babies & Toddler Play Group
    • Family Art Experience
  • Events & Parties
  • Calendar
  • Art Projects
    • Painting
    • Drawing
    • Printmaking
    • Mixed Media
  • About
  • Contact
  • Nav Social Menu

    • Facebook
    • Instagram

Painting with Watercolors and Droppers

February 15, 2018 by Claudia Brauer

One of my favorite art activities for preschoolers is watercolor painting on paper towels and felt. Young children find it absolutely mesmerizing to watch the colors mix and love squeezing and dripping the paint with the droppers. It’s a fun and playful way to teach about colors, to develop those fine motor skills and practice the pincer grip that will later be used to hold a pencil and write.

We started by reading the Color Dance by Ann Jonas. It’s a fantastic book about mixing primary colors and lends itself perfectly to let the children point out which colors they know as well as to do a dance party with colored scarves (as the children in the book do). After reading the book (and lots of dancing) we were excited to work on our own magical color rainbow.

Materials:

  • Droppers
  • Liquid watercolors
  • Paper towels
  • White felt sheets
  • Beads
  • Wire
  • Tape
  • Scissors

Step 1: Introduce the droppers

It might take a few of the younger children a few tries to get used to the droppers. We gathered in a circle, passed a glass with water around and practiced how to use the dropper: pinch and release to suck up the water, pinch again to drop.

Step 2: Watercolor on paper towels

Cover a table or the floor with a layer of foil and paper towels and prepare the colors ahead of time. Mix some water with just a few drops of liquid watercolors and add a dropper to each glass. Invite the children to drop the watercolors onto the paper towels.

While painting simply observe, comment and ask questions about what the children are doing. Focus on the process, the experience and the exploration of the materials rather than the finished product. Point out how the colors mix, how the towels soak up the watercolors. Ask things like “I wonder what color you will use next?”, or “I wonder what would happen if you mix two colors?”, or “Which colors did you use to create this color?”, or “I notice you’re squeezing your dropper really hard, I wonder what you have to do to make it drop the color again?”.

We even had our own color lab when some of the children started mixing up different colors in our glasses, just to discover that “it makes brown!”.

Collaborating on a project can lead to great discussions on friendship and sharing. We discussed how we can ask each other kindly for turns with the colors, or set a timer to share, to work out a trade or that it’s ok to say “I’m using this color right now, you can have it when I’m done!”.

Step 3: Watercolor on felt

We couldn’t get enough of painting with the droppers and once our paper towels were soaked with paint we went on to experiment further on felt. We loved the soft texture and made sure to drop the watercolors all over our felt. We watched as the colors mixed and discovered that we can create big and small drops and that we can connect dots and draw lines if we move our hand slowly. Some of us even mastered using three droppers at a time :).

The colored felt pieces turned out so vibrant that we decided to glue them onto cardboard and attached beads for a hanger (tape or hot glue to the back).

I hope your children will enjoy this as much as my group did!

♥ Claudia

Share
Pin13
13 Shares

You might also like

  • Potato Print Valentines

    Printmaking is a process of making art by creating designs or pictures on plates or blocks which are then used…

  • Valentines String Art

    Your heart is a horizon of endless possibilities. - Gemma Troy Surprise your loved one’s with a beautiful Mixed Media…

  • Salt Dough Valentines

    Salt Dough is easy and quick to make and lends itself perfectly to creating little gifts, not to mention homemade…

Filed Under: Painting Tagged With: Ages 2+, Droppers, Felt, Group project, Invitation to Create, Liquid Watercolors, Painting, Preschool Art, Process Art, Toddler Art, Watercolors

Previous Post: « Salt Dough Valentines
Next Post: Tracing Drawings »

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Mixed Media Calendars
  • Snowflake Mixed Media Collage
  • Christmas Potato Prints

Categories

  • Drawing
  • Mixed Media
  • Painting
  • Printmaking

Archives

  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018

Copyright and reposting

All content on this blog is copyright and owned by Wonderbar unless stated otherwise. If you want to use an image from one of my posts please link directly back to the specific post with my DIY instructions. Thank you!

Footer

Instagram

  • „What is love and how can we show love 💕?”
.
„Love is… when you give people your favorite dresses.”
.
„Love is… when my mommy plays soccer with me.”
.
„Love is… when you give and share toys and love people.”
.
„Love is… asking for hugs and kisses.”
.
„Love is… giving hugs and kisses and candy.”
  • Valentine’s Day Backpack Charms, Necklaces, Keychains, anyone? Modeling figures with Oven Bake Clay (aka Sculpey) is a fun weekend activity and makes for sweet Valentine’s gifts!

Get your own cards to inspire your Sculpey figures here:
“YODA Best Valentine!”
@designwashrinserepeat
“You are Dinomite!”
@sweetcsdesigns
“Will you bee my Valentine?”
@lilumbrella
“Thank you for being my Friendasaurus!” @aliceandlois
“Llama be your Valentine!”
@artsyfartsymama
Backpack printable:
@make_it_your_own_

Thanks to all mama’s and makers out there for giving away such sweet printable Valentine’s cards ♥️!
  • Squeeze, poke, squish and knead while playfully strengthening those muscles that are later used to hold a pencil and write. Thanks for the Snowman Factory @buggyandbuddy! ⛄️❄️
  • “What children learn does not follow as an automatic result from what is taught, rather, it is in large part due to the children’s own doing, as a consequence of their activities and our resources.” — Loris Malaguzzi, The Hundred Languages of Children.
.
Do we teach according to how children learn? Do we trust children to be their own guides and allow them to choose the experiences they are most interested in? Do we keep our environment responsive and flexible?
.
Making calendars the 3-year old children were mainly interested in cutting with the scissors ✂️ , using the the paper craft punches and layering different shapes while almost all of the 4-5 year old children engaged in symbolic drawing ✍️ inspired by the seasons.
.
More details and full DIY instructions on the blog (link in profile) ♡.
  • Create postcard-sized Mixed Media paintings to make calendars 📆 ! Though the concept of time is still way too abstract for young children to understand, we can invite them to use their imaginations to create pictures and/or use colors that might remind them of spring 🌷, summer ☀️, autumn 🍂 and winter ☃️. Start creating to one season, imagine the weather and what you like doing during that season. See what happens and what experiences the children will choose, e.g. they might just arrange the collage materials or maybe they will draw really detailed scenes inspired by each season etc. Find all the details and full DIY instructions on the blog (link in profile) ♡!
  • All 🙌🏻 on deck during our epic craft party to experiment with layering techniques and Mixed Media... Guess what we’ve been working on ♡!
  • We took our window decorations down and glued the snowflakes ❄️❄️❄️onto mat board which turned out to be a wonderful, open-ended art activity as well as a good introduction to layering with various materials. Find all the details and full DIY instructions on the blog (link in profile) ♡.

About me

  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Hello, I'm Claudia Brauer: arts educator, hobby artist, art therapist and special education therapist, based in Ridgway, Colorado. I’m excited to bring art enrichment to your home and hope to inspire other educators and parents to nurture childhood creativity through the arts.

Read More…

Recent posts

Copyright © 2019 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework