Saturday, March 16, 2013

Finger painting with Toddlers


It's super easy. Super fun. Super entertaining. And you will win the Mama of the Year Award.
If only those existed.

I have done finger painting with Elliana a couple of times. I will share both recipes that I have tried and the difference from both. Regardless of which one you try, I guarantee that it takes very little time, very little ingredients, and very little energy to make this activity happen!

The best kind of activity in my book. The easy kind.

Recipe #1: Easiest of easy. Thinner. Great for a "paintbrush" type of activity.

This is the first one we tried, and I loved this one because it was less sticky and I think ideal if you are using paintbrush. The picture doesn't have gooey stuff all over it and it dries well. That and this recipe only requires 3 ingredients. All of which we always have on hand

Ingredients
2 cups of flour. 2 cups of water. Food coloring.

Directions
Put water in large bowl and add the flour, stirring well. Divide into smaller bowls and add coloring.

That easy. See. Wasn't kidding.

Recipe #2: Would be more ideal as "finger" painting. My child however doesn't likes stuff on fingers.

As the title states... it's great if your child likes to get their hands dirty. Mine doesn't. I don't either if I am going to be completely honest here. That, and cornstarch smell is completely awful and I really thought I was going to vomit.

So, because my child did not like to use her fingers... we used spoons instead and that worked out well! Plastic spoons. Paintbrushes would obviously work better... but we didn't have those in the house at the time.

Ingredients
**1/2 cup cornstarch
3 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups cold water
food coloring


Directions

**In a medium pan, mix all the ingredients together to make the finger paint. Cook over low heat 10 to 15 minutes. Keep stirring the finger paint mixture until it is smooth and thick. After the finger paint has thickened take the pan off the stove and let the mixture cool.
After cooling, divide the finger paint into storage containers depending on how many colors you would like. Add a few drops of food coloring to each container. Stir the coloring in to the paint to determine the shade of color. You're ready to finger paint! Cover tightly when storing.

**Recipe can be found here.

4 comments:

  1. u would think after having 6 kids i would have done this finger painting by now....ugh maybe i'll wait until summer when we can do it outside and hose em down! (grins)

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  2. Lovely idea, i really want to do footprints of Rio's first steps..hopefully the weather will pick up so i can do it outside else i may have to risk the cream carpets getting painted too..it will be worth it though..right? ;)

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  3. Can't wait till my little man can do this!

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  4. Have you seen the idea of squirting some paint on whatever you're painting (paper, etc.) and then taping wax paper on top? Then the kids can smush the paint around without it getting all messy and when you're done, you just un-tape the wax paper and let the painting dry. I haven't tried it before (well, obvi, I don't have kids), but it seems pretty cool and not messy!

    ReplyDelete


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