We love doing art activities. But sometimes the kids want to paint something and they just don’t know what to paint. This, for me, is the beauty of the Paint Lab for Kids book. It is a visual gem filled with lots of great painting ideas. Perfect for the kids (or parents) to page through and find an inspiring idea.
Each idea is featured on a double page and includes a brief introduction about the painting activity, as well as what materials are needed and then step by step instructions.
More pictures showing different stages of the painting activity and a brief paragraph about the artist who inspired the activity (this is great as the kids can then go and search for more paintings by these artists) and also a little bit about how you could adapt the activity for younger kids.
We have done a number of the activities and so far the only additional art material that we needed was some dimensional paint (by the way this stuff is stunning we now LOVE dimensional paint – stained glass window painting). Most of the activities require – paints, watercolours or acrylics, brushes and paper – watercolour paper or heavy weight painting paper. The one thing I have found is it is better to use the decent painting paper especially for the projects where the kids paint “layers” on top of each other.
The book does include quite a few painting projects where the kids need to paint a background, leave it to dry and then add onto it. And I must admit until we started using the book this has never gone down that well with my two. But both of mine have loved doing the backgrounds, leaving them to dry and they have always reminded me that we need to go back and finish the activities.
I have also found that when we select a painting activity from the book and the kids complete the steps required they normally end up staying at the table and ask for more paper and do their own version of the activity – which for me is what any good art book should be aiming for – inspiring the kids to take an idea and make it their own.
And a few of the painting activities have been such big hits with the kids that they keep going back and redoing them again and again – The Watercolour Blob Characters is now a favourite painting activity for my kids.
My kids love this book so much that they have actually gone through each page and colour tagged which activities they want to do (pink are activities we need to do ASAP and the orange are for when we have finished the pink).
This book was sent to us by Quarry Publishers in exchange for a review. But it has honestly become my favourite art idea book. The kids and I Highly recommend this book.
ofamily learning together 
Oh what a happy chappy he is and in his shark shirt too….obviously loving the images he has created.
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