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I am a single mom, so I definitely need to be very watchful of my money. Though my son's education is very important (as I know you all feel the same), so I do put that up on my top priority list. I am wondering if I could save some money with the art supplies that are needed. I have oil pastels, brushes, canvases, etc and wondering if we could use those this year with CTC. Maybe then using watercolors in RTR. Can this be done?

Are you talking about oil pastels that look like crayons? If you are then I think those would be tough to use. The instructions are pretty specific to water color techniques. They learn different ways to blend and do ones that are like washes where it gets lighter as you go down the paper etc. The watercolor painting in CTC really is like taking a watercolor painting art class even though it is part of the poetry lesson. You don't do a painting a week in RTR like you do in CTC so it is really the only time those things are covered. You can get inexpensive watercolors at Millers Pads and Papers and then for the watercolor paper I used Michaels coupons and got inexpensive water color paper.

For CTC, we were able to obtain a basic set of watercolor brushes at Michael's for $5, they had 2 different sizes of round brushes and flat brushes just not exactly the sizes mentioned in the manual. We were also able to obtain a set of 12 tubes of watercolors for $5. The manual mentions 14 colors, we had our son mix the two that were missing himself, it was easy they were just lighter shades of colors in the set. So that was only $10.

I'd also vote for just getting the actual watercolor paints. There is a lot of blending and using of water to wash and dilute colors, so the watercolor paints are going to work much better than anything else. It's pretty specific to that type of paint. Ordering through Miller Pads and Paper, like some of the other posters mentioned, is a very inexpensive way to go. You use them a lot in CTC so it is definitely worth it.

Thank you all so much! I actually meant oil paints. It sounds like it would be best if I went with watercolors though. I am sure I could use the brushes, and maybe the canvases. Then I would only need to buy the watercolors. Again, thank you all for your help!