Kids Canvas Painting - Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds

Last Updated on April 15, 2020 by Sheryl Cooper

Canvas painting with kids is such a fun way to encourage creativity using different materials. You might recall when we made our purple canvas and when we explored abstract art on canvas. While these can be done individually using small canvas boards, we love to invite all of our preschoolers to work together on a large board. Group art activities build social and language skills as children decide together where the materials will be placed and deciding who will work where. We also work in groups on other types of art projects, such as our large color wheel.

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I love art on a canvas. When my local craft store has them on sale, that’s the time to grab a few.Last week I set a large canvas on our picnic table outdoors.

I added liquid watercolors and pipettes.What I love about using one large piece is that the children work together. It’s not “mine” or “yours”, but “OURS”.

They quickly realized that if they placed a different drop of watercolors on top of the first, they made a new color.

They then squeezed glue randomly around the canvas, on top of the watercolors.Salt was then shaken on top of the watercolors and glue.

They couldn’t resist touching the mixture of salt, glue and watercolors!

We could’ve left it at that, but we have so many blooming plants in our outdoor classroom! We decided to add some petals.

More watercolors were added…

This is when I stood back and just observed the process. Some of the preschoolers started focusing on adding salt to the watercolors, just because it was fun. {That’s the best!}