Wet-on-Wet Watercolors - Kindergarten

Kindergarteners worked with wet-on-wet watercolors this week to create their Alphabet Watercolors.

They listened to the story Mouse Paint to introduce the colors red, yellow and blue (that we would be using to paint with later in the lesson). Then, using the alphabet model on the Smartboard, made colored letters of the alphabet arranged in 5 rows.

I used a rubber band across their board to space the rows. As they finished one row, kids would slide the rubber band down to create a space for their new row. This helped with spatial arrangement.

Next I had them paint rings of plain water (like a doughnut) and drop 2 primary colors onto the ring and watch the paint spread and mix on its own.

As we are getting near the end of the year I had odds and ends paint to use. Not wanting to get out the pan watercolors, I used my SAX liquid watercolor for the blue. I didn't have any yellow or red of that left, so tried Dr. Ph Martin concentrate (which is actually a dye) because it was all Dick Blick's had when I went in. It wasn't so great for this application. Then I diluted some tube gouache I had in yellow and red. That actually worked pretty well, but the Sax liquid is much easier!!

Probably the hardest thing for kindergarteners was to remember to paint a clear water ring BEFORE dropping in the color AND remembering to wash their brush when changing colors (which was actually one of my main objectives).