I get asked by many fellow moms of art-loving children what art supplies they should buy for their children. Many of the moms whose children are in my classes locally have handed me a catalog for Cheap Joes or Utrecht, and asked me to circle what I thought would be good to buy. With that in mind, I thought I’d offer a hopefully-simple art supplies gift guide for art loving young ones, with some suggestions as to where you might find these supplies most affordable in the USA.

This article is for Preschoolers and early elementary students. The next article will be for older students.

Preschoolers and Early Elementary children really don’t need fancy “art supplies” per se. You can shop the school supply craft aisle for them. Most children don’t have the control or skill to really appreciate special tools, are are happy just with markers and crayons, and large sheets of newsprint. However, young children do like to paint with watercolors, which I find ironic because watercolors are quite difficult to manage for older children let alone younger ones. For general use, the little water color palettes that are sold in most stores in the school supplies aisles will do fine.

The only thing I would emphatically say is this: the water color brushes in the little water color palettes they sell (such as from Crayola) are the worst! Take those out, and use them to paint on glue for other projects. They are frustrating for painting.

A better choice for paint brushes would be an inexpensive paint brush set (it doesn’t have to say the brushes are specifically for water colors at this age), which you can find at stores like Big Lots, as well as Hobby Lobby or Jo Ann ETC. For painting larger background easily and inexpensively, a chip brush (about 50 cents) from the paint department of your local hardware store will work well too. I use a chip brush to wet my paper down, and draw on my background colors.

Equally frustrating for painting is using copy paper to paint pictures with watercolors. Regular copy paper, while cheap, is also very thin, and will disintegrate when overly wet. Most children like to paint around this age with an excess of water, so this is a bad combo. They will essentially have paper pulp on the table when they’re done painting!

A better choice of paper is something a little bit more heavy duty. Water color paper would be the best choice, as it is designed to hold up to the water. Because Water color paper is expensive, there are a few options for saving money on paper.

• Buy heavier drawing paper instead of water color paper
• only hand out one sheet of paper at a time, upon request. Don’t just let them make 50 paintings in an afternoon, but try to encourage your children to focus in on one-three drawings in an afternoon, and really do a good job with them.
• buy larger sheets of paper, and cut them into smaller pieces for use.
• Sometimes art supply stores like Hobby Lobby will sell larger packages of water color paper

Some children have a harder time learning how to control paints, but they love to paint. They may enjoy some Watercolor Pencils. These pencils have water-soluable leads, which means you can draw with the water color pencils, then take a wet brush to spread the color around like a water color. In my experience teaching first grade art class, this age group really enjoys water color pencils. I’ve found that most of the brands do well in this age group. There’s not a huge difference in quality.

If you have a large group of children you are working with, or if you’re doing a lot of painting, a set of tubes of water color paint (and inexpensive plastic palettes) will be a more affordable option than buying the 8 palette paint sets in the children’s section, which only seem to last through 2-3 paintings.

A set of markers, colored pencils, and crayons are always a great choice. For drawing with these tools, regular copy paper is the least expensive option and works fine. Again, with water color pencils, the paper may start to fall apart if it gets too wet, so something a little heavier is in order when working with water.

Dot to dot coloring books are also great for this age group, and helping them with counting and control when drawing. In this age group, the children tend to lack the eye hand coordination that comes in mid- to late elementary age, but dot to dots seem to help them develop better control.