Who is doing winter crafts??

Every holiday I love doing themed crafts. It fills my heart with joy. 

I’m also finding that my little prince really enjoys art, so I’m working on encouraging that and supporting that interest!

Lately we’ve been doing watercolour!

In my opinion watercolours are less messy and less work than finger paints/acrylic paints. 

Some of the things we’ve done are lights, ornaments, and trees!

With my oldest we tried something a little tougher. 

We used water on our brush to lay out our tree then used paint on our brush to dot on the water and then watched the paint spread out. 

If you have a kiddo like mine who loves control and perfection, this will be a difficult task. However I think it’s also essential to safely push past those comfort levels and false ideas that everything has to be perfect. 

She got teary when I showed her what we were doing and said, “I’m just worried it won’t be perfect and I’ll mess it up.”

I responded with, “what does Bob Ross say about messing up? There’s no mistakes just happy accidents.”

“Yeah, but I’m still worried I’ll mess up.”

“And what’s the worst that can happen if you mess up?”

She shrugged. 

I took my still wet painting and ran my finger across it messing it up.

“Oops it’s messed up. What do I do?”

She shrugged.

I flipped the paper over. “I try again. And now I know what not to do. I know what I like and don’t like and I can make it better now. It also means I get to use watercolour for longer.”

She smiled, and happily and easily did the art project. She also intentionally messed up her art work so she could try again. 

Allowing failure in low risk situations, I feel, teaches her that failure is okay and not the end of the world. 

My little guy did his own thing. I thought the concept of “paint with water, then put paint on” would be a bit too much. Instead he painted a tree and Santa Clause, along with some bright red “ordaments” as he calls them. 

Have you tried watercolour with your kiddos? We just use these double set crayola ones. I will say make sure the pans are dry before storing them sideways. They will slip out of the pans.