Painting with the kids

Dear Monica,

This past week I have been busy painting my china hutch and every day some small person asked if they could help paint.  They love to paint and to help but this is just one of those projects that I had to do myself.  So on one of the MANY rainy days we had last week I decided to give into their need to paint and do a project.

I had purchased some canvases from Michael's a while ago, planning to use them for a different project that just didn't work out.  So I pulled them out of the craft closet and had each of the kids pick an animal from the Silhouette.  Liam chose an alligator, Jack a lion, and Natalie a hippo.  I cut each of their animals out on card stock and trimmed the edges to fit the canvas to make a stencil.  I taped the edges and under any pieces that were sticking up.

Then had them each choose 4 colors of paint and I cut a sponge into four pieces, one for each color.

I showed them how to use the sponge to pounce the paint onto the canvas. They all had tendency to want to use the sponges like brushes, but I wanted them to do something new and different.

Liam was very methodical and had a picture in his head of how he wanted his alligator to look.

Jack started off by color blocking his.

And Natalie had to be encouraged to use all of her colors, not just the pink.

The finished pictures turned out AMAZING!!  The kids had a great time and were really happy with their finished pieces.  

Natalie's pink and purple hippo.

Jack's lion. By the time he was done all his colors had blended but you can still see some of the color blocking under the top layer.

Liam's alligator reminds me so much of something out of an Eric Carle book.

After they were dried I added eyes to everyone's with a sharpie and had Jack and Liam sign their names on the back.  Then I hung them proudly on our playroom wall.  

They are so excited to have their art work displayed in the house and proudly showed them to our dinner guests the next evening.  

XOXO

Emily