My wife is the perfect match for me. We have taught together in early childhood classrooms in our church for a while. Now she even buys things for our classroom without my asking - or without even telling me until the box arrives. Recently she purchased some paint sticks - tempera paint in a "lipstick" type format. (We bought them from Amazon.)
We have been using them for the past couple of weeks...and I'm sold. I always like for kids to have similar experiences with different types of media. So we use (at various times and sometimes at the same time) crayons, markers, colored pencils, gel pens, chalk. We've even used charcoal pencils and pastels. While the drawing is a similar activity, each medium gives a different type of experience because the lines are different and the way the marks interact with the paper is different.
These tempera paint sticks are fun and easy to use. The colors are vibrant. And my girls enjoyed the ones that had glitter in them. (As you know, the only way I use glitter is encased in something else!)
The paint isn't wet like using regular tempera on a brush. Make a line and the color stays in place without running or smudging. Of course, if you rub, it may smudge a little. But overall it's very clean to use.
If you like to make wide swaths of color - like my kids - then the surface does stay tacky for a while. That means that if you press your arm on it or another piece of paper on it, it will stick. But you can carefully peel it off with no mess. (Well, maybe you'll have to wash your arm a little.)
Since my kids like to draw right on the edge of the paper, they got lines of the paint on the table. But it washed off quickly and easily with a wet paper towel. (And, yes, I enlisted some kids to do that, too.)
I'm glad we have added these paint sticks to our art collection. They are definitely keepers.
And, after we used them for the first time, I saw this post about using them for tape resist pictures (from Pre-K Pages).
