The Painting Ce​nter in my TAB Classroom

The Painting Center was the third center I introduced after the collage center and the drawing center.

The poster below is one that I have now in my painting center for the children to see all of the things they need before they start painting. (It takes a while until they get used to following this) I created this one after I realized that the first one (seen below) didn't work that well. 

The left picture below is the shelving where I keep my paints and newspapers. (and as of now I also use old pieces of tag board for mats when I'm out of newspapers)

On the right is where I store my different brushes, sponges for using to wipe off the paintbrush after washing, paint palettes and water cups (I use old large yogurt containers)

I actually started out the painting by using cut up egg cartons to put the paint in as we are able to throw them out once they are done. HOWEVER, that worked great when I was the one putting the paints in the cartons. Now that they are doing it themselves I noticed that lots of paint was getting wasted so I moved to used these small paint wells (or palettes) since when I tell them to only give one spritz of each color, it does not have that much room to fill and less paint gets wasted.

I introduced the painting center by introducing 4 types of paint. (first and second graders were not introduced to liquid watercolors and 4th and 5th were introduced to acrylics as well)

I hung my 3 posters on the white board (the one in the middle was my original what do you need poster) to show them different types of paint along with how to get their paints. 

Third though fifth had to divide their papers in 4 and 1st and second in 3 (samples on the board of how they could divide)

On the top of the board I wrote each type of paint and lots of the girls referred back to this when they wanted to write which paint they used for each section.

Below are tempera cakes and liquid tempera (which is the most popular paint to use by all the classes since they get to mix colors with it)

The ones below are liquid watercolors and pan watercolors.

The children had to go to each table as they were ready to use the paints available on that table.

Below are 2 samples when finished and in the collage below of paintings are 2 samples of some of the younger grades.

Some samples of some of the paintings the girls have been doing.

As I said above liquid tempera is the favorite type for the girls  they use a piece of aluminum foil to mix.

As the year progresses they are introduced to different art terms and different materials. Shades,tints, primary colors, complementary colors etc are introduced. A number of children are also making their own color wheels and using the mixed colors for their paintings.