It’s summer time and since we’re all stuck at home because of the Coronavirus, you may or may not be running out of ideas to keep your kids entertained. Have no fear, Hi + Hello is here with an idea for easy art for kids!

When I was an art teacher, we did this easy art for kids project a few times with different iterations depending on the project goal. You can stretch this out by giving your kiddo smaller sheets of paper and an instruction for each one (draw a robot! Draw your favorite animal! Draw a peanut with legs!), or give them a giant paper and let them go HAM.

The key to making this a successful project is the make sure the crayon marks are fairly dark. Light markings won’t work well to resist the water so you really want to emphasize the crayon bit. Larger line drawings also work way better than detailed drawings so if you have a meticulous, detailed child this may not be their favorite thing. That being said, once you’ve got the drawing down, letting your kiddo go nuts with the watercolors is always super fun!

For this video we used Crayola crayons and watercolor but feel free to use whatever you have at home.

Want to experiment a bit further? Try having your kid draw with a white crayon on white paper and see their drawing magically appear when they paint! You can also learn about complementary colors by having them draw with only one color and only paint with one color. Some complementary combos are orange-blue, purple-yellow, or green-red.