Painting and a 4 year old

I have a crafty little child, not real surprising as she sees me always doing something. She loves coloring, Play Doh, cutting and gluing and painting. Painting is our latest fun time activity and I found a great way to enjoy this and not spend a fortune.

We started painting at home buying the watercolor trays you get pretty much anywhere with 8-10 colors that you get wet to activate. These are fun and contained but many times we would use most of the color in the first setting and rarely got more then 3-4 uses out of these and at 1.00-2.00 a piece this seemingly inexpensive craft adds up quick.

I am NOT a painter and have virtually no drawing or painting ability so choosing paints was foreign to me. I had some old little bottles of paints from attempts to paint craft items, so we tried those, needless to say the colors were less then inspiring for my 4 year old.

Then I wondered down the paint aisle and found poster paints, and what luck they were on sale for 1.25 for a 16 ounce bottle, a lifetime supply or at least more then one sitting. I thought I would get the primary colors and we could mix up our own colors which would be a great learning tool as well then add a few extras like black, white, brown.

Since I had my little shopper with me she informed me the colors we would be choosing and in the end we decided on 8 colors, for basically 10.00. I bought decent inexpensive brushes and an artist paint palette that I put a dab of paint into each section. For about 15.00 I got what I am guessing many, many months worth of painting fun. I only have the brush to clean and the plastic paint well that we use each time. I still want to get a piece of vinyl that I can put on the table put for now we just spread newspaper.


This has been fun for her and me as we paint and chat about colors, shapes, numbers and letters. It is tough to tell in the end who is the better painter, I personally think hers are better and she is always excited to show them off when finished.


I have saved quite a few and display them on the fridge and hope to do some other crafting with them as well. We did some large one and they will make great wrapping paper for smaller items, or cut them and mount them on card stock to make one of a kind artisan greeting cards. With all the paint and fun we have I am sure more works of art will be on the way!