Painting Birds with Ravensburger

In the quest for christmas gifts a number of months ago, I came upon a sale on painting kits made by Ravensburger. We LOVE the Ravensburger games that we have so I figured we would give this water color set a try. I believe it was given to Sophie for Christmas but she wasn't overly interested in it. She likes to draw and paint on her own. She doesn't like following anyone else's plan. It has sat on the shelf for a few months so I decided it was time to pull it out and give it a go. Sophie didn't seem to mind that her younger siblings did the three birds rather than her. 

 Molly, of course, picked the pink bird. You can paint the birds any colors you want but because the picture on the box had it painted pink she figured that was the one for her.

 The boys really enjoyed mixing the colors.  These water colors were liquid and they only gave us about 5 colors: red, yellow, blue, black and pink.  They got to squirt the colors into the little mixing dish to create the different colors they wanted. I had them start by making  a color wheel (Hey that fulfills a requirement in Henry's Wolf book. Bonus!) and have the boys teach Molly what the three primary colors were and then when they mixed together they created the secondary colors.

 They worked very dilligently on their paintings. The kit included three boards, each with a different bird embossed on it. The little ridges helped the boys control where the watercolors went on the page. They worked on these paintings for a goood half hour.  I kept hearing them say "this is so cool" or "I hope we can do this again".

 Look at that tonge between the lips. He was concentrating.

 I did help molly fill in her background. She seemed to think once the bird was painted the whole thing was done. I had to really encouracge her to paint the background green.

Here are the finished paintings. 

I admit it would be nice to have my boys be able to paint a picture without the embossed lines but in reality they aren't nearly as interested in art as I am and don't have the patience to work on a project all that long. This was the longest I had ever seen them work on a painting.  They had a great time and wouldn't be opposed to having another of the Ravensburger sets for another art project.