At a table of budding watercolorists at the Staten Island Museum, two 2nd-graders painted traditional landscapes of green grass and blue sky, a third created a red heart flower and blue clouds, while the fourth young artist composed a tableau of browns, rusts and blues.

“Four artists, four totally different choices,” said Jenya Frid, the museum’s manager of education. “I love seeing that. That’s kind of what we saw upstairs in the galleries, too: Every artist paints their own way and that’s what’s exciting about it.”

On March 13, the students in Jacqueline Velten and Melissa Hamm’s integrated co-teaching class at PS 54 on Staten Island traveled to the museum to experience “Art Now: Watercolor Fun,” one of 20 class trips the museum offers in science, art and history.

The trip was nearly three weeks after a blizzard blanketed New York City with snow. “I thought that this would be a nice way to welcome spring, hopefully,” Velten said on what was a sunny day with temperatures that climbed into the 60s.

After students were treated to a read-aloud of “White Rabbit’s Color Book,” about a rabbit that jumps into cans of paint, they experimented with color on their own. The students started their first watercolor painting by sliding their brushes across the bottom of a page to make a fat blue line. They then topped it with yellow to make green.

“What we’re going to notice today is that your brush can do different things if you press it down a little more, or if you stand it on its tippy toes,” Frid told the students.

They continued with other colors, using a light brush touch for thin lines, cotton swabs for dots and small sponges for stamping and texture.

Velten said she usually schedules two trips a year to the museum. The class previously visited to view works of the late African American artist Romare Bearden, a renowned collagist, and to make their own collages. “It’s really nice to let them explore art. We just don’t have time in the classroom,” she said, noting that PS 54 does not have a visual arts program.

At the museum, students view art on display “to get an idea that art is special and that everyone can do it” Velten said. They are also exposed to Staten Island-relevant art and learn that the island used to be quite rural.

On their recent visit to make collages, the children were in awe of the art in the galleries, Velten said. Museum staff “opened up the doors upstairs and the kids went, ‘Wow,’ because they’d never been exposed to anything like that,” she said. “It was the coolest thing to see.”

Hamm, who co-teaches with Velten, said she appreciates that her students learn about color mixing and that they have options in painting — such as including pink when they paint the sky. “I think they get an idea of how they can also be creative,” she said.

Upstairs in the galleries, the 2nd-graders were queried about colors, brush strokes and other details as they were shown landscapes, portraits, still lifes, painted porcelain and other artwork, including a massive landscape of Staten Island by Hudson River School artist and Staten Island native Jasper Cropsey.

“How many years did it take to paint?” one student asked, and was informed that artists paint at different speeds.

The tour also included a painting of a face with footprints on it by Lea Simoniello, whose work is included in the museum’s “Here You Are” exhibition of Staten Island artists. “Footprints on somebody’s face. You don’t usually see that,” Frid said. “Artists also paint things from their imagination.”

Back downstairs for their second watercolor, the students were reminded that there were no restrictions with art — they could paint objects, nature, people or anything. “You could paint things that are imaginary,” Frid told the students. “You could paint things with feelings.”

The Staten Island Museum, located in the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, offers class trips for students in pre-K through grade 12. Topics include biodiversity, dinosaurs, plants, memory paintings, portrait art, African masks and Lenape and Algonquin culture and lifestyle. Programs are 60 minutes, and slots are available weekdays at 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Each program includes a tour of the gallery connected with the theme of the lesson. Class sizes are limited to 32 students, and the cost is $150 per class. For more information, including information on Title I and special education accommodations, call 718-483-7135, or contact the Staten Island Museum by Education [at] StatenIslandMuseum [dot] org (email) or at their website .