plaster painting with 5 year old

I have two children currently in the 4/5 year old class. Last week I had planned on introducing a monoprint project to both of them but one wasn't feeling well. I had her in mind when creating this project and so when her mother called shortly before class to tell me she wouldn't be there, I quickly adjusted so I could save the project for the following week.

I happened to have a few plaster sheets I had created in the fall stored away, from a project focused on Michelangelo, and knew the other student would enjoy trying to paint on it. I had a bouquet of flowers I had made for the drawing class to use, so brought it out for him to also try his hand at drawing from real life.

Using tube watercolors, I created a palette for him using primary color plus brown and black. Looking at the bouquet, he did a pencil sketch onto the plaster and then began to paint his picture.

When finished, I gave him a thumbtack for him to try bringing back out the pencil lines that had disappeared when painted. Plus I knew he would enjoy exploring scratching into the paint. When he was finished, I cut off the extra burlap, something he was quite fascinated with and had asked a lot of questions about during the project. 

I had explained to him the burlap gave the plaster something to adhere too and made it so sturdy, he could actually break the plaster and it would still stay together. I even gave him the opportunity to drop his painting and create some cracks when he finished. He promptly declined, that is until his mother arrived at pick up and then he slammed it onto the floor giving his mother quite a fright since she didn't know it would stay together when broken.

His final work turned out lovely.

plaster painting by 5 year old

Here is it with the bouquet he used for reference.

He finished this project with about ten minutes to spare and so I asked him if he would like to use the rest of his paint palette on paper. He said yes and so I gave him a small piece of watercolor paper and while he painted and I cleaned up, we chatted about a vacation he had just taken to the United States.

He told me about staying on a farm and I asked what he saw on the farm. He told me about a canoe and a swamp. So I asked if he took the canoe out on the swamp and he said no because the canoe was very old and had barnacles on it.

We take a little more about his vacation and then he told me he was finished with his artwork.

abstract watercolor, "canoe with barnacles". 5 year old 

When I asked him to tell me about his work, he explained this was the canoe with barnacles. As if I wasn't already drawn to it because of the pattern and the color palette he created, the fact that he had painted the story we were verbally discussing made me so excited.

I love it as much as the main project he spent the bulk of class working on!

And this one he didn't slam to the floor, scaring the bejeezus out of his mother.