Written by Hilda Diaz, former educator at Trinus

Wet-on-wet watercolor is a formless painting method that allows children to fully experience colors. The paper needs to be soaked or saturated with water before begin to paint.

After painting with each of the primary colors individually, the children are introduced to two color combinations: red/yellow, red/blue, and yellow/blue. This is how children experience how secondary colors are created.

During the painting experience, there´s so many songs and stories to use:

“One morning, Tippy Brush woke up and looked outside his bedroom window. It was a crisp autumn morning. As he looked outside his window, he saw bright red leaves falling from the maple tree and blowing in the wind, filling the sky with their color. ‘Oh, I want to play with red today!’ he thought. (…) The red leaves were happy to have a playmate, and Tippy joyfully danced among the falling red leaves, until there were piles of bright red leaves all around.”

“One day, Blue was hiding. When Yellow found Blue it called out ‘Oh, there you are! I was looking for you!’ Then they laughed and threw themselves into each other’s arms and they were so happy that turned green as grass.”

Painting with young children not only helps their creative development but it also stimulates their brain. The right side of the brain is used for emotional and creative responses, while the left side of the brain focuses on analytical processes and logic. Learning to paint benefits children by using both sides of their brain.

Aside from that, there’s also other benefits of exposing children to watercolorpainting:

• Sharpen fine motor skills – From broad backgrounds to fine details, practicing painting improves hand-eye coordination and boosts motor skills.
• Therapeutic and contraction experience – Painting can be therapeutic because it allows the mind to focus on the images at hand and on nothing else.
• Non-verbal communication skills- Through the use of different colors, children can express themselves without the use of words.
• Self-confidence – Children need to work with other children and adults while they’re learning to paint. This interaction will boost their confidence, and also give them social skills to help them in other aspects of life.