Watercolor Heaven! That brief moment when everyone is painting and everything is perfect.

I've mentioned before how 3rd grade is often a challenge for me.  I finally got up my nerve to  watercolor paint with them, and it was everything I ever imagined it would be.

We have been learning about implied texture and making awesome alien portraits.  We drew an imagined formal alien portrait and added implied texture.  We traced in crayon and were planning a wax resist painting.

My class right after lunch was a disaster.  It took us forever to get supplies.  Several students did not follow set up directions.  Several students were not listening to instructions.  Several students ended up not able to paint.

We never got to watercolor heaven in that class.

I was already super cranky when my end of the day class came in.  I went through my same spiel.  We set up, we listened to directions, we got supplies.  And then it happened.

Watercolor heaven.

The room was silent except for the occasional excitement when the water changed color, or when they started to paint over their white stars and saw them magically appear.  I circled the room and everyone was on task.  Colors were translucent, brushes were in a point!  No one's brush was having a bad hair day, or scrubbing holes in the paper.  No one was using tissue to clean up spills and no one was wiping their brush on their smock.

Watercolor heaven t'was just a fleeting moment though.  Soon someone needed clean water, and another table spilled.  Two kids ran out of yellow, and another reallllllllly had to go to the bathroom.  One kid was done, another stuck their fingers in the paint, and of course one kid splattered water at their tablemates.

The hustle and bustle of cleaning up began.  The rest of the hour was a blur, but when their classroom teacher asked how they did, all I could remember was watercolor heaven.  "They were WONDERFUL!!  They did such a great job today!!"