Mouse Paint Fun

My kids are wonderful artists!  I love it when they just let loose and let the art flow.  No preconceived notions of what art needs to look like.   (Kids are wonderful that way)

Here is a fun color mixing lesson that isn't anything new, but I wanted to share how I do it with my kiddos.

We read the book Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh and then we use cotton balls to represent the mice.  

I squirt red, blue and yellow paint onto a 12x12 sheet of white paper and let the kids use 3 cotton balls as the 3 mice in the story.  We spread the colors around and mix the edges together  making the colors or orange, purple, and green when they meet.  The kids have so much fun working on the big paper and the cotton balls make perfect mice (and they keep the kids relatively clean).

Here is what our finished paintings look like.  I drew 3 mice on white paper and the kids cut those out and put them onto their papers.  They used Sharpies to draw the tails and whiskers.  

Here is our classroom bulletin board. 

You can see how some kids loved to fill the paper with the paint and how some kids were more reserved.  I gave them a large canvas (12x12) to work with.   I think it's important to give the artist choice and to let them make their own interpretation of the assignment.

So, there you go.  Get out your paints and cotton balls and let your kids mix some colors.  It's fun and the results are so beautiful.  (I liked them even without the mice.)

Happy painting!