Painting with preschoolers is a little messy, but a whole lot of fun! And, bonus: the students learned about another real artist.

Georgia O’Keeffe was a wonderful free spirit and painter who captured flowers, shells and landscapes in a big, beautiful and memorable way.

We started, as we often do, with a book. My Name is Georgia tells the tail of a “strong-minded young girl who liked to play by herself, dress differently from her sisters, and let her black hair fly when others wore braids.” The preschoolers loved it.

Next, we browsed some of her flower paintings.

Next, we painted our own flowers. We chose red poppies, because they are so big and colorful.

We started by painting a piece of paper red. We then added orange paint to it, and then yellow.

Of course the paint didn’t stay neatly in the yogurt lid … and caused a bit of concern among the young students.

I told them in art, it’s okay to make a bit of a mess. Ha! They loved it!

When the paint dried, we cut out a flower shape and added black and yellow tissue to the middle of it. Suddenly we were in the middle of a field of beautiful flowers!