Getting Through the Scribble Stage in Paint

I love paint.  Paint is my all time favorite art material to introduce kids to.  I love how quickly it changes a paper to a new color.  I love the feeling of pushing a loaded brush across paper. I love hearing someone shout, "I made PURPLE!!!!!" At the same time I cringe when I think about taking kids through the "scribble stage" of paint.  That stage where everything turns brown from over mixing and the paint tray is left an unusable mess.  Kids almost have to destroy a few paint boxes before they even see the need to wash out their paint brush.  All kids go through this stage, learning to care for the materials is a basic art skill and with paint it is tricky (and even expensive if you aren't watching what the kids are doing...) 

I had an AHA moment a few weeks ago when I noticed some 4th grade girls "playing" with paint and their water bucket as they were working.  They had great pictures, but were more engaged in changing the color of their brush cleaning water.  I decided right then to have the kindergarteners use water and the primary colors to explore.

I gave each pair of students a tray (my favorite donation this year) filled with water and the primary colors.  Each tray had 25  spots for mixing so everyone had plenty of room to mix and mix and mix colors.

It was crazy to see everyone so excited about color (and working through that scribble stage). Everyone was fully engaged and learning about how color changes when you add (clean or dirty) water, use a (clean or dirty) brush, or mix it with other colors.   It was so successful that I decided to try it as a center for my 1st graders.   I remember about 10 kindergarten kids last year, who spent their entire art time mixing colors only to find that their time was up and they didn't have time to "make something"  and document their learning. 

There was a lot of ...   "Cool!"  "...Look what I did!"  and even a few, "I made PURPLE!"

But also some... 
"When you mix orange and green you get brown!"
"You have to protect your yellow, it is is easy to destroy yellow!"

As artists, sometimes we need to take away the pressure of making "something" and just enjoy the magic of the basic elements of art.

What can I say... I love these kids, and I love seeing them explore and create!