20 Painting Lessons for Kids!

Hello, friends!

Today I thought I'd put together a big ole blog post of some of my very favorite lessons that both introduce and continue to explore painting with children. So if you are looking for a fun and engaging lesson for kids of all ages, I think you'll find something here. Thanks for dropping by!

But first, I gotta let ya know that the REAL reason I'm sharing painting projects with you is because my new book, The Paintbrush Ballerina, launched this week! 

If you've been hanging out with me for a while, then you've seen me share my method of painting with my students. Here's a little background on how the journey of the Paintbrush Ballerina began:

If you'd like to hear a little big of the book, check this out:

I wrote the book in rhyme as those have always been my most favorite books to read to children. In this story, our paintbrush friend who has been abandoned in a watercup in front of palette tells the tale of the Paintbrush Ballerina. You can read more of the book and see the illustrations here. 

It's tough to watch out students struggle with the most essential art supply: the paintbrush. And it's a real bummer to see the destruction they do to our expensive brushes! So I took everything that I learned from 25 years of teaching art to small children and put it into this book!

If you'd like to see me talking to my kindergarten about how to use their paintbrush, then check out this video here:

If you are curious about my teaching methods and would like to see more, I have a playlist on my YouTube channel called "A Glimpse Inside" where you can visit me as I teach my students. 

Keeping that brush on it's toes is always the goal! Check out this sweet kindergartener doing just that!

Alright, now let's dive into those lessons, shall we? I have no rhyme or reason to the order of these lessons. This is just a big ole smattering of some of my faves!

Let's start with kindergarten who are my very favorite! After learning about the order of the color of the rainbow, we dive into painting our own with tempera cakes. Tempera cakes are a fave in my art room as they are low mess and, low prep and the colors are just beautiful! I'll circle back to this lesson in a moment. 

To see more, check out this painting lesson here. 

Now let's skip forward to third grade. By then, you'd think they'd have a better idea of how to handle their brush. BUT I gotta tell ya, 'tis not the case. Even tho it feels like we say the same things all day long (cuz we do!) we are saying it to different groups of students! So I had the same sayings and phrases on constant repeat...and the bit about the Paintbrush Ballerina was one I always said. AND they always love!

Lesson details can be found here. 

To read all about bingo daubers and why I love them in the art room, visit here. If you've not tried them out in your art room yet...be prepared to fall in love!

When it comes to painting, it can be overwhelming as to where to start! Do I begin with color mixing? Mark making? Introducing white and black to share tints and shades? 

Here's what I've learned: start wherever you like! BUT start with just one thing. That's the easiest for you and your students. So, first things first, begin with how to use the paintbrush! THEN...maybe go with mark-making. I introduced my students to a wide range of color and mark-making ideas to create these beauties. 

Mark making lesson here.

Of course LINE is a great place to start. And I do have a book on LINE...Larry the Line that is!

For many years, this is how I introduced both painting and line to my kindergarten students. By limiting the color to just black (we used a diluted black ink to allow the brush to paint more smoothly), we could focus on just the brush and the lines. From there, we were able to add color!

When it came to introducing color to kindergarten, I usually did that, like I mentioned, the day after our black and white line painting lesson. That's when we did the rainbow paintings. BUT...since I'm skipping around a bit, you'll have to scroll down a pinch to see that first rainbow lessons. 

Many of my kindergarten lessons are born out of "the fast finishers need another something to paint!". And that's what happened here! After painting the rainbow, many students then got a sheet of paper and painting stripes of rainbow color. This served to be the perfect background for these adorable self-portraits!

Complete project here!

So sorry these are kinda out of order. Truth be told, when I try to edit or move images around, they tend to disappear. So...it's easier if you just scroll then if I sprout more gray hairs. 

Rainbow lesson here!

Meanwhile, in first grade, we took the idea of our paintbrush being a ballerina a little further. We listened to music and had her paint across our page!

More info here. You can also check out how we made these into beautiful weavings!

And now...color mixing! These wee Mouse Paint masterpieces were created by kindergarten. The best part...the Hobby Lobby frames!

Mouse Paint lesson here. 

If you are rand new to painting with children then start here! 

This is the VERY first painting project I would do with my young students each year. It all starts with a dot. The Dot to be exact!

Some years, we painted on paper and others, we painted on cardboard pizza rounds (one of my favorite surfaces for painting!).

You could paint on cardboard pizza rounds as my students did here. 

I recently had someone give me a hard time about this...

I shared that often, at the start of the school year, I do the same lesson with all of my students, kindergarten through fourth grade. Why? FOR MY SANITY! I'm usually trying to set up my classroom, introduce a thousand routines and just keep my head above water. Once I have my Back to School footing, I feel good venturing into different lessons with everyone. But, to start, we all begin with the same supplies, same visuals and same lesson. 

This commenter DID NOT like that and let me know. 

Now look, I'm cool with sharing your thoughts and opinions but...there's a way to do it. AND if you aren't an art teacher then...you might just wanna sit it out, you know? 

Regardless! I did THIS same lesson with all students AND put a twist on it so it ended up being a big ole collaborative. So there! ;)

Start with a dot and ...from there, you can go to here!

And it's still one of my favorite collabs we have done!

Or you could paint plates and then turn them into looms for weaving!

Since we are focused on painting today, I'll just be chatting about that. But for more weaving info, be sure and tap that link!

This is the same idea as my kindergarten line lesson but with first grade and on pizza rounds!

Now, let's jump forward to fourth grade! Here's one of my favorite landscape lessons based on folk art. We created these with tempera paint and you can check out more about this lesson here.

My second grade students created these paintings with either a warm or cool color watercolor background. When using watercolor, I often have my students decide if they will use one family of color or the other. This keeps their paintings from becoming 'muddy'.

Full lesson details are here. 

Another spin on that concept of warm versus cool can be found in this spring-themed lesson. 

This lesson can be found here. 

I love a big ole painterly tempera paint lesson! This one was inspired by Vincent van Gogh. I love the cardboard printed trees!

More about this lesson right here. 

This lesson with fourth grade introduced my students to tempera cakes and many different painting methods. We began by painting these stripes of color that were later used to draw buildings in Sharpie. Full lesson on this process, with video, here. 

We used cardboard circles as our base for our snowglobe. I had my students create three sketches first. They LOVED those little small circle paintings so much that we turned THEM into a project too!

Our marble "sketches" were used for a fun and quick follow up project! You can find the details on this lesson here. 

This snowglobe lesson was done with tempera cakes. And glitter...which I don't recommend, ha!

I've done a couple hot chocolate/cup of coffee based lessons (I may be a little biased, I suppose!) and you can find this lesson here!

Let's circle back to the ole bingo dauber, shall we? It's like a Sharpie on steriods!

I LOVE that we can create the most epic contrast with the bold black ink and these bright paints! We are using Jack Richeson's neon tempera cakes here.

All the info is here. 

These looked epic in our Glow Gallery! 

This lesson is always a hit and the kids love it! You can check out the details, including video, here. 

Want to introduce the magic of oil pastel and watercolor paint?

Landscape with pattern resist by third grade lesson can be found here. 

And, of course, if you are in need of some LOVE this season, find this lesson, with video, here. 

If you are looking for more Valentine's-themed lessons, check here for some short lessons and here for longer projects. 

Thanks for dropping by, y'all! Until next time!

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In the Art Room: Painting Processes

Precious first grade friends sharing paint and getting ready to try their (messy) hands at sponge painitng.

Hello and welcome to The Art Room. 

Which, during the week of Painting Processes, could have easily been dubbed The Day the Paint Factory Vomited...or maybe What Happens When You Give Children Double Espressos and Paint Brushes. Although just calling it The Day the Art Teacher Taught a Half Dozen Painting Techniques in a 1/2 Hour Because She's Nutz would probably be the most accurate.

Yet, despite the Big Fat Hairy mess, we had fun, the kids learned tons and their paintings look fantastical. Lemme tell you how it all went down.

How student teacher Rebecca Tenpenny and I set up the tables for the day.

I'm a huge fan of the blog Painted Paper. If you are an art teacher, you gotta get yourself over to Laura's blog because it's beyond inspiring. It's aspiring. In fact, it gets me so excited with it's awesomeness, I often find myself perspiring. Because that's what every blogger wants to hear, right? "Your blog is so amazing it makes me sweat!" I'm sure at this point, if she's reading, Laura is like, "um...thanks?"

Anyway, before this gets awkward (oops, too late), what Laura does at the start of each school year is have students create dozens of painted papers (hence the title of her blog, ya'll). The kids then have these amazing papers to use in their works of art throughout the year. GENIUS, right?! So Rebecca and I decided to totally steal, er, heavily borrow, that idea. 

If you wanna give this wild and crazy ride a go, here are the supplies needed per child:

• one 12" X 18" paper, quarter folded
• one large bristle brush and one small bristle brush
• one large sponge and one small sponge
• one texture comb
• one toothbrush and piece of cardboard
• a stencil
• an apron
• no chairs

And here's a student's painted piece to show you the processes covered during that 1/2 hour:

• dry brush painting using a cross hatch pattern (upper left)
• sponge painting using a stencil (bottom left)
• texture combing with paint splatter (right)

As soon as the students entered the room, I had them grab a piece of pre-folded paper from the "store" (you can go here for more details on how we gather supplies in the art room), take it to their seat, jot down their name and teacher code, throw on an apron and gather around a table for demonstration. Once each student was at the demo table, I demonstrated how each painted process was executed. Because our time is so limited, I told the kids that they'd be working quickly but not crazy and that our painting time would be controlled by the toot of my trusty train whistle. 

Here's how I explained each process to the children before they set to work:

 Dry Brush Painting with Cross-Hatch Pattern: Believe it or not, this was one of the hardest painting processes for the kids to grasp. I found that the best way to explain it to them was like this...how would you describe the texture of a broom? It's dry, right? Well, imagine that this white rectangle is your bedroom and your mom told you to sweep it. Using any color you want, dip your brush but just barely because we want the brush to be dry. Now, using diagonal lines, sweep your brush all the way across your paper. Be sure to sweep your whole rectangle. Imagine how upset your mom would be if she found you only swept one part of your room! Once you are down sweeping with that color, pick a different color and sweep in the opposite direction. See how the lines cross over each other? That's called cross-hatching!

Now the kids didn't actually go to their seats and set to work until after I'd demonstrated all the techniques so the sequence of these photos isn't accurate. Sorry. However, I did want you to see the kids in action. So here's some dry brush painting by one of the experts.

Sponge Printing and Stenciling: Next I demonstrated using the larger sponge, picking one color and sponge printing. I emphasize that it's called printing and not painting because I want the kids to know that they are creating a texture by pressing the sponge down and picking it back up. As opposed to just wiping the sponge all over the paper. Once that rectangle is covered in the color of their choice, I show them how to stencil with a smaller sponge and this collection of holey scraps (which included a brief chat about how sparkly confetti is made!). The key here is to use very little paint. A concept that is akin to rocket science for some.

When we ran out of those little round sponges with the handle, we created these guys with a clothes pin and a cosmetic sponge. We so smart.

Texture Comb with Paint Splatter: For this, the kids painted the entire half of the paper. I really had to emphasize that for this process, they'd have to work the opposite of the dry brush painting in that their paper needed to be super duper wet with paint. So I told them to paint quickly and thickly but not crazily. I painted with the larger brush and only used one color. I told them that their paper should have a shiny and wet look to it before using the texture comb. Once the texture comb was used, I then showed the correct way to splatter paint. Which, as it turns out, no matter how many times you show them, they are going to attempt many other ways of splatter painting. Ways that might include splattering their face, their neighbor and the floor. Jackson Pollock woulda been proud

Painting quickly and thickly but not crazily.

I picked up these texture combs from Sax after years of cutting them out of cardboard. By the way, I don't believe flipping you the bird was intentional. But I could be wrong.

For splattering, I showed the kids how to dip their toothbrush into any color and scrap the bristles away from themselves and toward their paper. They were allowed to chose as many different colors as they liked. By the way...this technique was part of the inspiration for this dress.

After the demo, I had the kids do a quick "repeat after me" run through of the processes. From there, they were asked to return to their tables and hold up the small brush for dry brush painting. Once all brushes were in the air, I blew the train whistle which was their signal to begin that process. When the whistle was blown again about 2 minutes later, that was their signal to put all dry brushes down and hold up their large sponge. Again, whistle blows and...begin sponging. This routine was continued until all processes were complete.

At this point, we were closing in on the end of the 1/2 hour. Quickly the students took their paintings to the drying rack, put their aprons back on their tables and met me at the door to line up and receive a baby wipe ... which did little to nothing for their artsy hands. But we finished! And they loved it. And now we have all of these amazing papers for our upcoming collage projects. I couldn't be more excited. Have you tried any of these painting processes with your students? I'd love to hear more ideas! Rebecca and I are planning a water color painting processes in the near future. I'll be sure to keep you posted. Until then, special thanks to Painted Paper for the inspiration!

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