Watercoloring is a quintessential activity you’ll find in Waldorf school starting in kindergarten. And using Stockmar concentrated paints will help you achieve the lessons that are suggested in kindergarten and first grade. These paints come concentrated and need to be mixed with water. I’ll walk you through the steps of mixing the primary, secondary and some tertiary colors. Keeping your supply free of contamination and water ensures that your Concentrated Stockmar paints will last a long time. When you mix your colors, only mix as much as you think you’ll use in about 2 weeks. Storing them any longer heightens the risk that your mixed paints will go bad. They will mold and smell like rotten eggs. While the paints will still work and once dried the paints won’t smell, but to avoid the paints going bad, only mix about 10-20 ml of paint. Depending on what projects you do, this amount should be enough to do several large wet on wet watercolor projects. If you feel that that amount is too much, only mix the primary colors: Lemon Yellow, Ultramarine Blue and Carmine Red. From these three colors, all other colors can be made. In the primary years, these three colors are not only adequate, but highly recommended to that the secondary colors are formed during the watercolor lessons. In fact, the first lessons are ones in which only yellow is used. The following lessons introduce one other color to yellow: blue. Together, the child can see the magic of yellow and blue making green which is fascinating and beautiful. Starting in second grade, the secondary colors can be used without mixing the primary colors during the lesson, you can mix them ahead of time, or use the vermillion and golden yellow provided in the set. Stockmar paints come individually, as a set of three and set of six. Yellow tends to go first as it is used for orange and green and seems like more yellow is needed compared to red and blue when mixing orange and green. Variation of green, orange and purple are achieved by adding more or less of each primary color. Variations on green and purple are also achieved by mixing carmine red and yellow with one of the two blues: Prussian Blue and Ultramarine producing a true purple or plum depending on which blue base was used. The color choices are nearly endless. Mix all colors together to make brown. Using high quality natural brushes is recommended.