Watercolors and other Kids Painting

My girls love to paint. And I love them painting. It takes a little set up, but then they just paint. It keeps them from being in front of the TV, and it's fun to see. The paintings are also great to send to grandparents!

First off, watercolors. We got our first set of watercolors from a friend when my oldest was 2 or 3. We've gone through many of the plastic tray sets since then. In fact, the cost was kind of adding up. Recently I decided I wanted to get some quality art and craft materials for my kids. Using some Christmas gift money, we went to the craft store. We did it all in one go. If your craft store has weekly cupons and its close enough for a weekly trip, it's actually more economical to do a little at a time.

Here's the point I want to make about watercolors: If you plan on having your kids paint with watercolors fairly often, get the paint in tubes! I have a picture of our set here, next to the plastic tray set we still have. It costs something in the realm of $2.50 for one of the plastic tray sets, maybe $1.50 if you have a cupon. We get probably 8 good uses out of it. The tube set we got cost $13, or $8 with a 40% cupon. Based on what I've used so far, I'll get anywhere from 50-75 good uses out of them. Allowing for the different prices, that's 10-35 more uses for us. Since mommy is the only one allowed to touch the paint tubes, the colors only get mixed up on the palette, and the kids get pure colors to start with every time they paint. Since the paint is more concentrated and doesn't get as overloaded and diluted with water, they also have more control and seem more confident in their creations. The downside: I'm not sure if they're non-toxic. Since my kids don't put paint in their mouths, I don't really worry about it. Not everyone is that lucky, though.

Basically, I'm saying,with little artists in the house, decent quality paints are worth the expense to me. Just wanted to share in case anyone else gets frustrated with the expense of paints for their kids.

On a less monetary note: there are so many fun ways to paint! Or do crafts for that matter. We've started checking out kid craft books from the local library. One I have really liked is Crafty Kids Paper & Paint. It has a lot of ideas you could find online, but my kids like to look through the book and choose what to do. We just did q-tip paintings and paper towel food coloring paintings. Another fun resource is kidscraftweekly. You can sign up for a newsletter to be emailed to you, and it has fun home craft ideas for kids. I just love painting and crafts and coloring for my kids. It keeps them engaged and is so much fun.

Happy painting!