The kids love to paint and asked all week to do it. We finally had the time this afternoon, so I got our paint supplies out. Having taught for 10-11 years I have learned a lot about this activity, mostly about making the clean up process quick and easy. First, we always either paint in the garage or outside. Today we had just a little breeze, so we ended up painting in the garage (I've learned papers blow away very easily!). To start with, I keep cheap dollar store table cloths on hand to use on our work surface. I always keep table cloths after our birthday parties too as they work well. Next, I filled a couple recyclable containers with a little water to rinse our brushes in, and grabbed some paper towels to have close by. I always put old t-shirts or something on over the kids clothes and we just reuse them each time we paint. Lastly, I poured some paint in disposable meat trays. Both the plastic and Styrofoam ones work well. This makes clean up a breeze; I recycle the water containers, throw away the paint trays, and just fold up (or throw away) the plastic table cloth.
I think its an adults nature to want the children to keep the paints separate, but this is a great learning opportunity. I happened to put pink and blue in one meat tray (at opposite ends). Lillian mixed them together and learned she could make purple. Of course this led her to wonder what other colors she could make. We had a great time and now have lots of art work for the Grandma's to have!
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