Just A Fun Day Painting With Kindergarten

Due to some weird scheduling things, I have one of my three kindergarten classes way ahead of my others.  I was grappling with what to do and decided just to let them have some free painting time.  We had just finished our primary color still lifes and so I wanted to reinforce the primary colors.  We started out reading Karen Beaumont's Ain't Gonna Paint No More and talked about how to be RESPONSIBLE painters.

After that, I pretty much just gave them papers, had them write their names with crayon, flip it over and get a paint shirt.  I gave tables primary colors of liquid tempera (I added both turquoise and regular blue, then after a bit added magenta and white). 

 Students were allowed to paint whatever they wanted, and were told to stop 'when it's the most beautiful painting you've ever made.' 

 Here are the results:

BIG, GIANT SIGH for the many many hours I've spent trying to rotate these photos to the correct way I photographed them.  If anyone has a solution that works, I'm listening because Google 100% is not helping.

Back to the actual lesson, I was worried about mixing-to-mud, but I only had two do that:

 I do love it when we have a free paint day that goes so well!