Four-year-old Head Start student Carnell Douglas sat at a table painting with watercolors.

“Look what I’m doing,” he said, flattening the head of his paintbrush against the paper and twirling it in circles. “I’m making footprints.They’re from tigers.”

At a table nearby, children dipped inflated balloons into paint and bounced them on pieces of paper. Other children made collages with stickers or painted with sponges.

The scene was the result of a new collaboration between the Lawrence Arts Center and the local Head Start program, a free preschool that serves children with special needs or from low-income families. Since September, the arts center has been sending two teachers into Head Start classrooms two days a week, paid by an anonymous donation.

The idea is that, in a city that prides itself on its arts, no young children should be left out of the picture.

“It’s an outreach program to kids who might not always have art or who can’t get to the arts center,” said Linda Reimond, director of the arts center’s Arts-Based Preschool program. “This is really the beginning of a program that we would like to sustain.”

Carolyn Kelly, director of the Head Start program, said her students already were doing some art before the arts center got involved. But she said the center’s teachers brought specialized experience and new ideas such as having kids use salad spinners as painting tools.

“It’s been good for the arts center staff, too, because they’ve been exposed to different children in the community who have different needs,” Kelly said.

The arts center’s teachers have been going on Monday and Tuesday mornings to classrooms at Plymouth Congregational Church, 925 Vt., which houses the local Head Start program. Lawrence’s Head Start serves 78 children, some of whom attend class at Plymouth and some of whom are bused to Plymouth from Kennedy and East Heights schools for art class.

Reimond said her teachers’ goal was to help build children’s confidence and creativity. There are no wrong answers and no specified ways a painting or sculpture must look.

“This is not product-oriented. It’s process-oriented,” she said. “The goal is learning through your hands.”