- It all started back in January when we made our own cornstarch toddler paint.
- Then, we tried our hand at marbling paper with shaving cream and paint.
- And most recently we made our very own homemade water color paints (and then actually used them to decorate a wedding card!)
Well, now I've got another homemade paint experience to add to the archives. Yesterday we played in the park with several friends, so I brought some homemade sidewalk paint for the kids to try:
Want the exact recipe I used? Errmm... let's just say that I took a pretty intuitive approach. (There are lots of lovely tutorials out there sharing exact measurements and ingredients, so you can just google those.)
I took the lazy way out and simply mixed cornstarch and water together until I had a whitish liquid that had "paint-like consistency." Then I added about 10 drops of food coloring to make each of my three colors.
The payoff for my relatively little amount of work was pretty awesome. The kids had a blast painting the pavement. (In all honsty, I was pretty surprised that the activity went as well as it did.) The colors were quite bright when they first touched the pavement, but they became a pale pastel when the paint dried
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| Wet paint shown on left |
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| Pastel paint when dried |
The little guys sat still for at least 5-10 minutes and painted away. (Whoa! That's like years in toddler time) There was some serious street artwork going on there.
Oh yeah- if you try this activity out with your kids, try to keep their hands out of the paint. It stains. Somebody's hand got into the blue paint.... and well... let's just say that even after several washings, it's still slightly blue. Eeek! Smurf baby.
With all the lovely warm weather rolling in, I'm looking for some fun and cheap activities that are easy for toddlers to do. Got any ideas? I'd love to hear them.