Artistic representations of lessons is a common practice in Waldorf education. Often, main lessons will include an illustration. While we have used various art mediums from chalks to watercolors, we often settle with color pencils in middle school and crayons in the early years.

Ever wondered what the rainbow of Stockmar watercolor paints look like? For nearly 20 years, I thought these paints only came in six colors. I would use those colors to mix green, purple, plum and brown as well as variations within those colors.

Having a rainbow of colors for art isn't always necessary as many colors can be made when combining the primary colors. However, without white and black, some colors just simply cannot be achieved.

Cold press or hot press? 90 lb. or 140 lb.? Which watercolor paper is going to be right for you and your projects? I share my experience with four types of watercolor paper by Fabriano. Hot press paper is smooth to the touch and I've used this paper for our geometry main lesson block. Because it's smooth, we can get clean arcs and lines with our pencil, straightedge and compass.

When it comes to homeschooling and educational supplies, A Child’s Dream is one vendor I’ve been shopping at for years. As we conclude our final years, I’m sharing some materials that have been especially useful throughout our years of education.

I am delighted to share with you 27 colors of 32 colors that Stockmar carries for their block and stick crayons. I'm swatching each color both lightly and intensely so you can see the variation in color intensity and color variety. When blending colors, go lightly so colors may layer well and bring out secondary colors.

This quick tutorial will take the guesswork out of making a crayon case for any type crayon. We did fill ours with Stockmar crayons from A Child's Dream, but you can adjust the size of the pockets to fit any crayon or color pencil.

I love block crayons because they are not easily snapped or broken. They just wear down to little blocks, but one thing I don't like is when other crayons rub off onto the crayons. Then when the child goes to draw something, multiple colors comes off of one block. To remedy this problem, a crayon case is a good solution.

Painting and drawing in Waldorf schools and homeschools follows a specific pedagogy starting with wet on wet watercoloring with ethereal images that are not defined. This mirrors that developmental stage of students aged 6-8 years old.

What happens when your pencil or color pencil gets so tiny, it's uncomfortable to use? It would seem reasonable to toss the color pencil at that point, especially considering that pencil extenders (at least the first set I bought years ago) can run anywhere from $5-$13 each! But if your color pencil set costs a lot too, what are you left to do?

This quick video show you what pencil extenders (pencil lengtheners) are and how to use them. These particular extenders are made for Lyra brand color pencils and can be found at Waldorf Supplies.

Watercoloring is a quintessential activity you'll find in Waldorf school starting in kindergarten. And using Stockmar concentrated paints will help you achieve the lessons that are suggested in kindergarten and first grade. These paints come concentrated and need to be mixed with water.

Watercolor pencils are perfect for drawings you want to bring to life with vibrant color and superb blending. They are especially great for non-detailed drawing in which colors blending into one another enhances the project.

Ever wonder which color pencil set you should get? Well, I can't make that decision for you, but I can show you the difference between these color pencil sets and hopefully this will give you a better idea which one will be right for you.

In this tutorial, I showed how to sew a wool felt pencil case for color pencils using felt from A Child’s Dream, pencils from Tombow, and a sewing machine. I started with an 18-inch red felt square, folded a 5-inch pocket, and used tape as a guide to sew straight lines for pockets 6 inches wide, large enough to hold two pencils each.

I love using art supplies in our homeschool. I'm sharing with you some of the products we use often: Distress Inks, non-stick scissors and hand-made paper from Nepal. All the supplies were purchased from Blick Art Supplies.

Having trouble choosing the right paint for you wood pieces? There are many to choose from and while many peg dolls are painted with acrylic, there are other choices if you wish for the wood grain to show through your final project.

Looking for a way to keep your play scarves, silks and wraps neat, organized and easy to get to? Look no further. I have a super simple solution you can do for just a couple dollars, as well as a more permanent slightly more expensive option.

While this may be a step by step tutorial, you'll find that I made a number of mistakes while instructing my 7-year-old daughter. This is a live lesson with no edits, so you'll see the whole process from start to finish. I show how to mix Stockmar watercolors, which paper we use, how to mount the paper and which brushes work well.

Have you ever limited your paint pallet to just yellow, red and blue? Having the freedom to choose from a myriad of colors is thrilling, but equally thrilling is being able to make a variety of colors with just the three primary ones.

At times this video is painfully slow and quiet. I decided to leave this as unedited as possible so you can see how a lesson proceeds from start to end with unexpected changes and challenges. At the end of the video, I share some reflections on the lesson. It seems like most recent watercolor lessons have been flops.

Lately, I've been using open glass jars for our paints and they've worked well for one surprising reason: The paint doesn't mold! Instead, the water simply evaporates and and leaves a dried cake of paint which can be rehydrated for later use. This has worked out well for this series of lessons because, while we are working through lessons almost daily, we are not using all the colors at the same time, so some of them dry out and all we need to do is add a bit of water and get painting!

Lesson 1 is all about exploring the color yellow. It seems simple enough and yet in practice it was really challenging! I’m not sure if the challenge is universal and only felt with adults who have already spent their whole life working with colors rather than creating shades of a single one. What you might experience as you go through these lessons is that you, the teacher, are learning too.

In lesson 2, we dive further into the color yellow. Because the Stockmar paints come with a bright yellow and a warm golden yellow, this lesson lent itself well to exploring both yellows together. While this is a suitable second lesson, you may wish to continue exploring yellow on its own during this lesson, but use the golden yellow instead.

In lesson 3, we explore the color blue. For this lesson we made arches in varying intensities of blue. You may find that some students and teachers are firm, defined and somewhat rigid. Can you tell between us which person was like that? If you look at the final paintings, you’ll see how beautifully my daughter’s shades blended into one another. Mine are so defined and in my opinion, not as beautiful to me for what I was wanting.

Watercoloring is one of my kids' favorite artistic outlets. I'm going to show you a few different techniques that you can do using a typical Waldorf technique called 'wet on wet' watercoloring in which the watercolor paper is first wet with water using a sponge or dipping it into a basin of water.