My Most Brilliant Parenting Idea to Date

I've been doing more enrichment with Little Miss.  We do dance parties, signed up for a music class, put together several sensory play activities and painted.  We've tried both water color and tempera.  It seems that whenever I get out the water colors she's interested in running her brush over the paper and when I bring out the tempera, she just wants to dip her brush in the water cup and play with that.  Finally, it occurred to me that having a finished product wasn't the point.  I needed to figure out a way that would allow her to do both things without making a huge mess.  And then the most brilliant idea ever hit me- why not just paint with water?  If she wants to paint, then great, it will show up on construction paper.  If she's interested in playing in the water cup, that's fine also and no paint would be wasted.  I just had to test my idea.

SUCCESS!! She loved it and I loved not having to clean up a huge mess at the end.  We've tried this a few times and each session ended when she dumped the water cup onto the paper, but it's nothing that a towel couldn't easily mop up.  The best part is that I just leave the paper on the counter to dry and it's ready to go next time we want to paint.  I'm sure that this is not an original idea, but I'm not going to let that keep me from feeling smug.