“Sally, look!  My rock turned purple!” Three-year-old Eleanor can’t contain her excitement as she changes the color of a rock with her paintbrush. Ah, the joy of painting rocks with water. Yes, water!

I will be the first to admit that I really wanted to be the educator who LOVED paint and easels and smocks and all of the joy that it gave me on the one day of the month that I actually got to use those paints when I was in kindergarten myself. Yes, I wanted to be that educator!

But I discovered long ago that my vision of paint utopia was unrealistic, which made me feel like a failure of a preschool teacher. I have made peace with my aversion to thick, gloppy, messy poster paints and moved on to watercolors. I’ve perfected the art of keeping them all together in a bag and whipping them out with a flourish to entertain my early learners on a snowy Monday, feeling like a rockstar of an educator. Well, sort of, but not really. The unvarnished truth is that paint is just not my favorite medium.

But there is one kind of painting that I really like—and that is painting outdoors with water. If you struggle with the mess that seems to be an inescapable part of painting or your landscape looks different as we navigate the global pandemic, then welcome to my water paint party! Regardless of the age or developmental stage of your students, this kind of painting doesn’t get old. Simply dig out the paintbrushes and a water source and let the celebration begin. You will never, ever go wrong with water play of any kind! On hot or dreary days, just bring out the resources, including whatever you need to document the learning standards that you’ll meet, because this is going to be a hands-on, brain-building bonanza!

It took me years to figure out how to keep everything in one place for easy access when the mood strikes. Paint rollers or paintbrushes from leftover family paint projects work extremely well. Those bigger brushes and rollers are really great for building the strength and muscles in the hands, wrists and arms, which will make handwriting easier when the time is right. No need to rush that. We’re too busy painting with water, baby!

Wondering how to get started? Use what you have! There is no need to make a purchase for this activity. We like to start out small with younger children. I have all of these supplies from my earlier attempts at what I thought my paint play should look like. Setting the stage with simple materials like paintbrushes and water creates an environment that allows children to become curious scientific researchers.

“Will the rock fit in the paintbrush hole in the cup?” Scientific investigation going on right there!

“Wait! My rock isn’t purple anymore!” Eleanor has been so busy painting other rocks that she has just made her way back to her favorite rock. As her friends gather around for a closer inspection, four-year-old Noah says with a giggle, “It evaporated!”

Wow! It’s always a delight when friends can lead the learning with one giant vocabulary word like EVAPORATE!

“Watch. If I paint here on the sidewalk, it will disappear,” Noah adds. “The sun dries it up. It evaporates!”

Without a sound, the whole gang begins painting the sidewalk to see if their watery brushstrokes will evaporate as well. This is hands-on, child-led learning at it’s finest. So much is happening in this moment. We have children using their leadership and language skills and mentoring their friends. We have scientific inquiry happening at their level of understanding. We have PLAY!

Don’t be surprised if the sidewalk, chairs, tables or other loose parts make their way into this adventure. It’s fun to watch their brains light up with observations, predictions and cause-and-effect scenarios as the water changes each surface it touches. Preschool children have an innate passion to investigate and make sense of the world around them. By integrating science and mathematical discoveries into their play, we are giving them a strong foundation and understanding of their world.

As the children in the group begin to express wonder and share their observations, the water play generally takes on a life of its own. By bringing in buckets and pans of water, along with a collection of pouring cups and pitchers, we can extend the learning into the mathematical world of quantities, estimation and volume. All of this is data analysis. It may not yet be recorded on paper, depending on the development of your group, but you are planting the seeds for this activity in the coming years.

Add this to your toolbox of outdoor learning.

Of course, we often bring this activity indoors as well—usually in the early spring, when the snow won’t melt and the sun won’t shine.  My indoor setup usually looks something like this:

It’s a great crabby Monday activity that will surely lighten the mood in your classroom. Happy water painting!

Color blending is a fun, hands-on activity that encourages understanding about early math concepts.  Creating an artistic, open-ended curriculum is an exciting way to explore math as descriptive language and problem-solving skills are formed.

We can help children build important connections through shape, line, and color and they begin to see form and portion as a distinct part of a larger picture.  By discussing how to add more paint or less water, children learn to measure and estimate.  They are beginning to identify with a world filled with many shades and hues. By focusing on art, we can easily shift the focus to math and the variety of ways it is used in our everyday experiences.  Using numbers in collage, painting shapes, and drawing objects can help children use art as a basis for understanding math. The basic skills of vocabulary, description, sorting, matching, observing, and experimenting are inherent to color blending.  Children will discover cause and effect, figure out solutions, and understand how things work in relation to their environment.  These are all essential blocks in building an important foundation in math as well as necessary to each child’s educational journey.

The more we involve children’s senses in any artistic process, the more memorable the experience will be for them.  Mixing paint with glitter or essential oils can become a celebration for the senses.  With a little imagination, the simple act of painting becomes a colorful journey as primary colors transform into secondary colors right before a child’s eyes.  Red and blue mix together and then, magically, purple arrives.  Children will observe how every color began its journey as one of the three primary colors. This fact alone is fascinating as children will watch with wonder as this magical process evolves.  Artistic experiences can evolve by adding a variety of art tools and textures.  Children can paint with feathers, balls, or leaves and use the sidewalk or wood as a canvas.  Sometimes the color of mud is made and then the marvel of mud pies could be investigated.  Each new discovery can evolve into a higher level of learning. 

Since the love of all things new comes naturally to children, finding ways to incorporate their ideas will take their curiosity even further.  Creating is effortless when children feel confident to express themselves.  They will acquire new ideas through their creativity and learning becomes natural rather than a forced process through teacher-initiated activities.  This inclusion helps to create a learning environment that is both meaningful and enjoyable.  Children find comfort when their ideas are considered.  By giving them a role in their learning experience, it will heighten their curiosity as well as their confidence.

As we investigate color and math with children, they begin to make connections to the importance it plays.  Color is one of the first things children use to make distinctions between what they observe and how to describe it to others using their newly developing language.  They find immense gratification in pointing out a red leaf by explaining its difference from the green one.  Through this process, understanding how color can describe something is both enjoyable and useful for them.  Color can excite, shift a mood, inspire, or remind us of a special memory. Children are delighted to discover the magic of color, it’s importance, and how it changes often by way of their imaginations.  By recognizing color, expressing observations, and understanding shape, line, and proportion; children are discovering how to use color to mathematically organize their world.  Connections are discovered, and treasured memories are made.

Pumpkins have natural grooves in them that go from the root of the stem to the bottom.  The are usually parallel to one another and create this sense of having “stripes” all around.

It might be fun to have the children paint their pumpkins as a “last hurrah” for the pumpkin unit.  (I would probably do some sort of cooking activity as well – i.e. healthy pumpkin bread.) Painting the pumpkins with a pattern of color might be interesting to some of the children.  You could show them the stripes and then explain that patterns are something that repeat in a predictable way.  If you have an American flag, you could show the children the red and white stripes and explain that the red,white, red, white, design is a pattern, because it repeats.

Ask the children if they want to make patterns on their pumpkins.  Some may, some may not.  Some may want to simply paint their pumpkins in their own creative way. I would encourage that as well.  For those who want to create a pattern, ask them what colors they want in their patterns and then set them up with the paint, pumpkin, and brushes, on a covered table.  This one is gonna get messy!