Painting with kids is usually done at an easel. This type of painting was something called tray painting as we use a tray for the children to mix the colors on.

They only get the primary colors and they mix them on the tray. When you don’t have a good tray, aluminum foil works great. It’s actually better in some respects as you can just throw it away when you want another one and the cleanup is easier.

I have a great free   a great kids crafts where you can pick up all about the differences between art and crafts that has detailed explanation of how to do tray painting.

As in many of the art activities I give children I like to give them some parameters of what to make.

It really gets them thinking about what they are doing.The first painting they were allowed to create what they wanted.

The second painting below they were told to cover the entire paper with shapes leaving no white spaces.

The children above got the idea while the child below didn’t grasp the concept of leaving no white space. All she heard was shapes all over the paper.

This child was  bit older and thought she was funny as she created one big rectangular shape. At first I mentioned to her that I see she didn’t want to do shapes and she said “Oh yes I did, I made one big rectangle.”

The next assignment was to see how many hues they could get out of different colors and one child took the shapes concept and created her hues in shapes all over the paper without exposing any white.

Doing this type of painting is more versatile than easel painting as

1. You don’t need an easel
2. You can do it anywhere, on tables on floors
3. There’s only one brush so there’s less to cleanup
4. Lots of kids can do it ant one time while at the easel they are limited to two (usually)