I saw this idea of flower painting for kids in book that I would love to give credit for but, I can’t remember which book it was even though I looked through all of my art books I have.Many of the ideas like these that I find in books are really for older kids than the early childhood years and often have to be adapted.This idea is like a relief type of picture. You put down some kind of barrier to the picture and paint or use other media on top of it.When you lift up the barrier (in this case tape) you can a relief of what shape the tape was.

This idea was to make a fence out of tape, have the children paint flowers all over it and then remove the tape making it look like the flowers are behind the fence. I loved it when I saw it and we tried to do it with a group of kids between the ages of 4-6.

We first had them put the tape down to look like a fence. I must admit that we gave the children more help than usual for this part, since this wasn’t really the main part of the activity. Some of them did not understand the concept and we helped them do a basic fence. We had some of the colorful tape but, it is better to use the plain since they don’t get hung up then on which color they use.

After all the kids had the tape down, we gave them black, thin markers and told them to make flowers all over their picture INCLUDING over the tape. Many of them were having a hard time with the concept. They could not understand that they had to draw OVER the tape and many concentrated on flowers above the fence or in between the slats.

With some of the kids again, I have to admit I actually showed them places they should make flowers ON the slats (I know for me to do so is practically sacrilegious)Otherwise the whole effect of the activity would be lost.

We then gave them watercolor paints to paint inside their flowers. I used the Prang Washable Watercolor
because I had read that they were one of the better types of the watercolors in a tray. They did seem quite rich looking.I also loved the idea I had seen somewhere else of the children using black markers and filling in with watercolors, as the effect is beautiful.

Another problem we ran into at first was that the markers we gave them were washable and started mixing with the paints. The paper however, was a good quality watercolor paper so once we told to try to stick to doing it inside the flower, and to dab instead of stroking the brush, it didn’t turn out so bad.

There were definitely children that couldn’t expand their comfort levels and couldn’t make the flowers over the slats of the fence

They were able to remove the tape even before their pictures were all dry and even though some of them did not have the exact effect I thought we would get, they still came out quite nice.

I do think that this activity would be much more successful with kids in early elementary school as opposed to the early child years of kindergarten and nursery. If however, you were looking to do flower painting with kids and wanted to use watercolors it is a fun activity.