We had a very rainy spring break, thank you for asking. It was almost ridiculous and one late afternoon amongst pouring rain, I broke out a fabulous activity that I found via Inner Child Fun, formerly Frugal Family Fun.
During naptime, I mixed up three different colors of paint and put them into squirt bottles. They actually lasted overnight and might have lasted longer if Clara hadn’t been obsessed with painting and used them all up. I don’t keep self-rising flour in my house, as it seems silly, so I adapted the recipe as follows:
1 C. all purpose flour
1 C. salt
1 1/2 tea. baking powder
1 C. water
Food coloring
I mixed all of the ingredients except the food coloring together in a bowl until smooth . Then I put a few drops of food coloring into each of my three squirt bottles and split the flour mixture among them using a funnel to control the mess. Then I shook them up to distribute the color.
After naps, we took all the paints and some white card stock over to the cousins’ house and we painted for the whole afternoon. I had the older kids draw their pictures first with pencil and then go over them with paint, while the little ones just squirted at will. This was a very interesting medium for them to use as they had to do at least think about negative space if they wanted pictures to show up–they couldn’t just fill everything in with paint.
The best part was the puffing, though! After the pictures were painted, we popped them in the microwave for thirty second or so (depending on how much paint was on the paper) and they puffed up and dried immediately! Super cool effect and immediate gratification. I think all in all, we made at least forty pictures over two days. This was a huge hit!
I do the same thing. Only at dinner time with ketchup, mustard, hotsauce, etc. And my canvas is the shirt I’m wearing.
Oh that is soo awesome! I’ve never even seen these. Thanks for the idea.
Can’t believe you just made up a recipe, they look really good, did anyone eat theirs?