We’re at the end of the first week of Easter Holidays here in Queensland and while they’ve enjoyed laying around recovering for a few days, it was time for an activity.

With a friend and cousin we took a vote and painted the Colourful Cow from my online class, Owl, Cat and Cow.

Now, with ages 7, 8 and two 9 year olds, I would recommend spreading this activity over two or three sessions. They did a fantastic job but it’s a long time to stay still (and it makes for a better result if they are still concentrating!). And see the elbow in the paint above? Yes, best to put the paint palette up next to the water bucket!

We stopped and started the video so all four could keep up (the youngest were the speediest) and I realised that it would be good to also have photos of each stage… so I’ve just added 9 step-by-step photos to the Cow video and will add them to the Owl and the Cat over the weekend.

These were the basic supplies we used. You can get Chromacryl paints from most newsagents in Australia I think. They’re ‘student quality’ acrylics and not too expensive. They did need a bit of water to help them flow though. Oh, and definitely use aprons as acrylics are hard/impossible to get out of clothes.

We also did a few extra lines to practice how to drag the brush along, and when you bend the bristles you get a thicker line… that’s also mentioned in the video.

All in all, they were all very proud to show their paintings to parents, friends and grandparents, and we had something great to show for the effort!

At just $35 for all three painting videos, and all three need only four paints, I hope it’s a fun thing for more parents to try with their kids these holidays, and I encourage you to paint alongside your child to make some real memories!