We used several different shapes for tracing a design on to the paper. This included a stick for drawing a grid, an oversized protractor (from math class), triangles and other shapes. We went over the pencil lines with crayon pastel. This provides a buffer between watercolors and a nice contrast We talked about using warm or cool colors and a color wheel was displayed.
I always stress that students need to take their time.

I encourage students to refrain from painting one color right next to another, this helps us to keep colors from bleeding into each other.

Although we used warm or cool colors I encouraged the students to include a few areas of the opposite side of the color wheel to attain some variety.