Enjoy the fun of a rainy day in the warmth and comfort of your very own home! Let your young artist create an abstract masterpiece à la Jackson Pollock, while learning valuable lessons in color and the painting process. He'll enjoy turning simple watercolors into a rain splattered painting filled with vibrant colors that mix and run together. Prepare for a messy art storm; this painting project will have the house raining with all of the colors in the rainbow!
What You Need:
- Watercolor paints
- Thin watercolor paintbrush
- Cup for water
- Several sheets of white paper
What To Do:
- Discuss rain and weather patterns with your child. This may include reading a non-fiction book or looking for weather-related websites. Talk about why and how it rains.
- Give him the paints, water, and paper. Ask him to predict what will happen if he uses very little water with the paints or if he uses a lot of water. Ask him to test his theory and observe the results.
- Invite him to dip his paintbrush back into the water, and then choose one color. He can now stand or kneel above the paper and create ‘raindrops’ by dripping the water colors onto the paper.
- Have him repeat with different colors, and experiment with different amounts of water, and watch as they mix together to form new variations.
Follow-up this activity by asking him to explain how he made his paints "rain" inside. Was it like a real rainstorm? How was it different? What happened to the water after the painting had time to dry?
Erica Loop has a MS in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education. She has many years of teaching experience working in early childhood education, and as an arts educator at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.
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