All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

That’s the magic of Kindergarten isn’t it? Check out what the kids in my son’s class did. They gussied up these plain pine chairs for their school’s Home Tour and Silent Auction.

Ok, they did have a little help, but this project was pretty easy. The hardest part was to make sure all 75 Kindergarteners got to participate!

First, we procured some simple pine kid-sized chairs and did a coat of primer. Then, we painted each chair the base colors, black for the boys’ chair and periwinkle for the girls. Both of these layers took seconds because we used spray paint.

Then, we were ready to get the kids involved. We taped off a checker board pattern so the boys could use white paint to make their checks. On the girls’ chair, we traced circles in multiple sizes and had the girls choose either light or dark pink, yellow or green to fill in a circle. Then back at home we “cleaned up” the checks and circles and embellished each chair with more patterns on the sides and backs. We also added finials we found on the cheap at Michael’s to give the chairs a whimsical look.

For the seat designs, my mother-in-law found some images online of the cheshire cat and tea party scenes from Alice in Wonderland. Because she’s a great artist, she copied the images right onto the seat freehand with a Sharpie, but if you’re not so artistically inclined, you could trace the images directly onto the chair. Then, it was simply a matter of filling in the lines with a few layers of acrylic paint.

Once the design was complete, we sprayed the chairs with a few layers of clear spray paint. This forms a protective layer between the paint and varnish and keeps the paint from smearing when the varnish is applied.

The last step was a final coat of Minwax water-based polycrilic protective finish, and this adorable couple is ready to be auctioned off to the highest bidder!