Easel Paint

I am very excited about what I learned today! I love using powdered tempera paints but have had trouble with them when they are used on the easel. No matter how I mix them, they are too thin. The paint drips down the paper. They are fine when used while painting on the table but on the easel, gravity works against us.

I found a recipe for paint in the book, The Preschooler's Busy Book by Trish Kuffner. The recipe we tried is for Flour-Based Poster Paint. It worked fabulously - No running paint!

I read an article here about kids and the amount of time they spend using their easels. I started to think about ours. We go through phases where our daughter uses it a lot and then we can go for weeks where she hardly uses it at all. So, I was wondering what I could do to encourage her to use it more consistently? What could I do to change things up to keep the easel interesting? Would adding a greater variety of materials increase her interest?

This paint accomplished that today. The fact that we got to make it together was fun. But, while making it, she was eager to try using it. She proudly showed her artwork and her new paints to Daddy when he came home from work. Making the paint gave her a greater interest in using them. We'll see if this interest continues.

Above is her final masterpiece. She painted every last inch of the paper!