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Powder Paints – Why use them?

Powder paint is coloured pigment, which you mix with water in order to get wet paint. It is great for schools because it is child safe, gluten free, and highly versatile. It is available in many shades, including a fantastic fluorescent!
Ready mix paints seem to be more prevalent now in early years settings, mainly for their obvious convenience. However, ready mix paints do not provide nearly as many learning opportunities, nor promote independence, as powder paints do.

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Powder Paints – Why use them?

Try encouraging a self-service painting area, where the children help themselves to the paint they need and mix the colours they want.
We also need to give children independence. Too often, we under-estimate what young children can do and we over-intervene, sometimes stifling or even stopping learning, rather than extending it.
Powder paints are also highly cost effective because you only need very small amounts of powder.
Children are able to choose how runny or thick to make their paint. Powder paints, due to the fact that they are dry, have a far longer shelf life and literally last for years! One tub will last you months.

How to get started?

You also only really need a few basic colours to get started and to create all the colours.
A good starting batch would be the primary colours of blue, yellow, red, and then to also have some black and white.
A note of caution about the black, however! Use very sparingly or it gets everywhere and every painting becomes a black sky!
The idea is that you allow the children to mix up their own powder paints, using water.

How to get started? - Continued

The idea is that you allow the children to mix up their own powder paints, using water. How you set this system up is up to you, but there are some tried and tested methods you can fall back on.
There are so many learning opportunities that can arise from the children mixing their own powder paints. Mixing their own paints will aid the children's fine and gross motor skills, through the WSPP (water, sponge, powder, pallet) method. This step-by-step process will assist the children's hand-eye coordination, organisational skills, and their spatial awareness.

WSPP- Water, Sponge, Powder, pallet technique

The WSPP (water, sponge, powder, pallet) system is a simple discipline that the children can learn from very early on. They gain a visual/tactile memory of the paint mixing process and of bringing paint to life from scratch!
Dip the paint in the water potPress or dab in against the sponge/paper towel/cloth to remove excess water.
Pour a tiny bit of paint powder from your dispenser in to your mixing plastic pot or pallet.
Stir the water and paint together, and add more water if needed from your pump dispenser.
Apply the paint to the paper.

WSPP- Water, Sponge, Powder, pallet technique in pictures.

Possible learning activities using powder paints

It is clear that the children need time to just explore the powder paint. But, there are so many activities that can be attempted once the paints have been explored. This is not an exhaustive list, but may provide some starting points:
Put out a tuff tray with little piles of powder paint, in the primary colours, with some plastic dispenser bottles filled with water, and let the children explore the paints with their fingers. Encourage the children to roll up their sleeves, put on an apron and get stuck in! It will be messy and it will be fun! Stand back and listen to the vocabulary and conversations that come from this fantastic exploration activity. A great opportunity to take some valuable observations!
Try the above activity with different colours, such as black and white.
Add sand to the powder paint and talk about the texture.
Try painting pictures or making colours with powder paints thickened by PVA glue and washing up liquid. This gives a wonderful, glossy finish when dry. Add the PVA/washing up liquid mixture slowly while stirring it into your already wet powder paint mix.
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Possible learning activities using powder paints

You can make foamy, tactile, sensory goo by mixing half a teaspoon of washing up liquid, a teaspoon of dry powder paint, and a teaspoon of cellulose powder paste, and then, slowly, keep on adding water until you get your foamy, tactile, sensory goo!
Allow the children to mix their powder paint with shaving foam for a fun, puffy, experience.
Put some glitter shakers in your paint self-service area and allow the children to add a glittery effect. You might like to add a pot of PVA glue so that the glitter sticks!
Make sure you display the efforts of the children, with speech bubbles telling the reader about the process, in the artist's own words. This also serves to show parents/carers/visitors how much you value the creative process, whatever the end result may look like!