At my 7 year old son's school this month during a themed "art week" one of his teacher's asked me to come in and do a painting project with them.  

I decided to concentrate on colour so the first day gave them acrylic paints - only the primary colours and white and took in a few books with Van Gogh paintings.  I told them to look at the images and use them as a starting point for a painting.  Most of them went for the sunflowers and a couple of rebels liked starry nights.  They had fun, especially  once they got over thinking they needed to copy the images exactly and produced some great stuff.  They had to mix their own green, oranges, purples and browns which they seemed to love finding it quite magical to see the colours change from one to another.

The next lesson I took in a huge bucket filled with all sorts of grasses and wild flowers that grow on the verges near the school - poppies, daisies, dandelions, a huge beautiful purple thistle and others I can't name.  Then on a 2m long piece of prepared canvas they collectively painted a flowery meadow.

I took a few photos when they had a show of their work at the end of term party this weekend.