First Post- paint disaster

While looking for crafts to entertain preschoolers in an after school care program for a few hours I found a project using fingerpaint to make a tree picture. Since this was just last Fri, I had them make it into a Fall-colored tree. I got to the center early to take an inventory of possible supplies. They didn't really have much actual fingerpaint but everything they had was washable. I grabbed 1 black & 1 orange tub of paint, a box of individual paint sets, empty bowls filled half with water, some brushes of varying sizes, different color construction paper, & a little red fingerpaint tube. I laid down a long sheet of like a thick paper to cover & protect the table from the paint. I drew a really quick, messy pic of an ordinary tree as an example for the kids. I waited until more towads the end of the day to start painting in hopes that there would be less children to make a mess by then. ONly 1/10 had left though. I had a bowl of orange in the middle on one side of the table & 1 bowl of black (lack of enough brown for the trunk of the tree) on the other side. I made sure each kid had a paper and a brush if they wanted one, & that there were enough indiv. paint sets spread throughout the table for if they wanted brown or another color not in a bowl.

Needless to say by the end paint was everywhere, including the actual paint sets, ......