One time I read an article that was about how to teach a child to draw. Rather than follow step by step directions which teach one way to draw one thing, you spend some time activating their thinking by talking about what you notice in the thing you are observing. It was an awesome article and I hope I can find it again someday. That is the process we used for these PreK lilac watercolor paintings. The students and I talked about what we noticed in the lilacs and then they painted, first the stem, then the flowers. For simplicity's sake since we were nearing the end of the school year and had one day to finish the paintings, I gave each student just a purple and a green prang watercolor well instead of a whole set of paints.
We use ice cream buckets or coffee containers for cleaning brushes when painting. They are much less likely to spill than smaller cups and they are big enough that I can pretty much get by with putting one in the center of each table for students to share.
Here are the finished paintings from my PreK artists!
