Our easel comes with a paper roll holder mounted on the top of the easel so we decided to replace the regular roll of paper we use for painting to a roll of paper towels and then we invited the children to try a little drip drop easel painting…
I slipped a roll of paper towels over the paper holder and then pulled the paper towels down over the easel just like I would if using a roll of regular paper. The children were shown how to gently pull the roll of paper towels down until they have a good canvas to drip their water paint on…
For our water paint, we put out cups of water tinted with liquid water color and added plastic pipettes to each color…
And because we had been talking about fall trees, the children were given the option to paint with or without a tree. Most preferred I add a tree to their paper towel. The children tried to draw their own tree trunk with branches (and they do this on paper easily) but they found it difficult to draw on the paper towels so in the end, I became the designated “tree trunk with branches” artist of the day…
Once the tree was ready to go, the children were on their way to adding their beautiful fall leaves by dripping the water paint any where they desired on the paper towels…
Most of the children who tried this process asked to do it many times so as long as we had paper towels left on the roll, the children could continue to make new trees or explore the drip drop painting…
And the children enjoyed watching each other do the process too…
And as the children finished their paintings, we showed them how to gently tear the paper towel from the roll and drape it over the line to hand up to dry. Some of the children needed help with this part and some liked to do it themselves but their paper towels were very wet so we had quite the trail of drip drops on our floor too…
We use Bounty brand paper towels because they do such a good job of absorbing the colors of water paint and do not tear quite so easily when wet. In the end, the children’s painting were simply beautiful and because many of the children made more than one, we sent most of them home and saved a few to display on our walls…
Links to Grow On
Painting fall trees with egg cartons by Teach Preschool
Sorting through the colors of fall by Teach Preschool
Puffy Paint Fall Trees by Blog Me Mom