February 5, 2010 by Megan Schiller

Watercolors and Whipped Cream

For the last class of the 4 week painting session, we are exploring liquid watercolors. We started off painting coffee filters to experience the qualities of liquid watercolors (coffee filters soak up the liquid really well and show off the colors). At first Kate was reluctant to paint, so I asked her to choose two colors to start with. When she chose blue and pink, she smiled and began painting right away.

After the coffee filter and paper paintings were finished, I removed the trays and offered the kids scoops of whipped cream (made without sugar) to paint with their watercolors. I told them it was “foam” so they wouldn’t automatically ingest it.

Whipped cream is a great alternative to shaving cream in children’s art. Many preschools and children’s art books use shaving cream as a sensory painting experience, but there are a lot of toxic chemicals in the foamy shaving cream. Even children over three who don’t put it in their mouths would still be better off using whipped cream instead. The consistency is so similar!

Painting with whipped cream on the aluminum foil is a great sensory experience! It’s shiny and slippery and it makes a fun crackling sound when you rub it.

For our easel painting today, I cut up an old white sheet and hung it over them to use with water color spray bottles. The kids couldn’t quite figure out how to squeeze the trigger, but they were very interested in the bottles! Kirsten was the first one to try it out.