Make a wet palette with things you have at home.

Painting with kids presents it’s own challenges: attention spam, fidgeting, “accidents” and occasional silliness. this is part of the experience, and as much as some kids do have a focus that put adults to shame, others find it more difficult, in particular if they have ASD or ADHD. But there is never a reason why someone cannot try their hand at painting!

The main issues we faced when teaching children to paint were: spillage, paint drying (wastage) on the palettes and damages brushes. While we cannot fix all issues at once, here is a cheap and simple way to limit spillage and wastage: make a wet palette

A wet palette is like a normal paint palette, but wet (imagine that!). It serves several purposes: helps to keep your paint useable and thin, and it also makes mixing easier.. Also, it helps so we do not have multiple tubs of paint open on the work area… It does still represent a risk for spillage, but a flat shallow lid is less likely to be knocked over than a tub of paint.

What do you need for a wet palette:

• A tuperware. preferably one with a lipped lid (we use the lid itself as the palette)
• A sponge or kitchen towels
• Parchement/Baking paper

Steps are super simple:

• Put the lid upside down on the table (mine has small bit poking out, so I clipped them out)
  
• Fold 2-3 pieces of kitchen towel in 2 (you may have to cut a bit off) so it lines the bottom of the lid.
• Cut a piece of parchments paper so it fits on top of the kitchen towel

Then all you do it pour water in the lid so the kitchen towel is soaked. You will need to make sure it stays wet by adding water if required, especially on hot days. Then simply lay the parchment paper on top (it will stick to the wet kitchen towel)

And off you go. If you have dropper bottles, just quizz a nice drop on, for other, just scoop some with a brush and put on the palette. Remember to put the paint tubs away to avoid disasters and off you go.

The paint will say useable for a long time, and you can place the tub itself on the lid to give it even longer life-span.