Choosing Paints as Early Childhood Art Materials

Practical Paint Supplies for Day Cares and Preschools

Jan 7, 2009

This article provides brief guidelines and ideas on how to choose appropriate, child centered art materials that can be used for painting activities.

Visual arts activities can be an exciting way to enact many types of lesson plans. The arts can impact learning in many curricular areas across multiple developmental domains. These can include math, science, and pre-literacy areas, as well as the cognitive, emotional, fine motor, social, and aesthetic domains. The following article provides a brief guideline that focuses on choosing appropriate painting materials for the early childhood classroom.

Types of Paints to Choose From

There are many different types of paints available from school suppliers, art stores, or craft centers. Types of paints that you may come across in your searches are tempera, water color, acrylic, finger paints, and oils. Items labeled tempera, water color, or finger paint are generally acceptable to use with young children. These are water based paints.

Avoid anything labeled as an oil based paint. These are not appropriate for young children and should not be used by them. Acrylic paints may be used with older school aged children, but should also be avoided with younger children. These paints are not easily cleaned and will stain clothing.

Art Materials in Liquid Form: Choosing Paints

There are many considerations to take into account when choosing child friendly, appropriate painting materials. These include (but are not limited to) toxicity issues, cost, clean up, shelf life, and intended use.

A simple way to verify that a paint product is non-toxic is to read the label. Non-toxic products should have the ACMI (Art and Creative Materials Institute) certified product logo on the packaging. Another way to explore toxicity content, prior to purchase, is to consult the ACMI website .

Cost may be another issue for the child care center choosing an art supply. Certainly budget constraints may influence the overall decision. There are many options out there. Visit different craft stores and consult a variety of school supply catalogs before choosing. Please remember, sometimes price and quality go hand in hand. The less expensive paints may not be as high of quality, but are better then nothing.

Clean up issues can be evaluated by reading the product label. Make sure that the label states that the product is washable. Many water based paints are highly washable. Do note that even though a paint may be "washable" dark and bright colors may not easily clean up off of clothing surfaces.

The final categories mentioned can be grouped together: shelf life and intended use. If you plan to use large quantities of paint over the school year, shelf life is not as important. If you plan to only paint once in awhile it becomes more important. Buy according to projected use. Mass quantities of water colors do you no good if your class enjoys finger painting every day.

Simple ways to save money when choosing paint products are to limit color selection or plan to mix with water. Try selecting the primary colors and white. Not only will this save you from buying every color in the rainbow, but it will also allow the class to explore color mixing. If yellow and blue can make green, why spend extra money on it?

Painting in the early childhood classroom can be a very enjoyable experience. Select the appropriate paint, evaluate the cost, and begin adding art activities to the everyday lesson!

The copyright of the article Choosing Paints as Early Childhood Art Materials in Day Care is owned by Erica Loop. Permission to republish Choosing Paints as Early Childhood Art Materials in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.