I know, I know your not suppose to play with your food. But sometimes you've just got to bend the rules, a little. Most of the time I'm a clean freak, and I don't often like messy activities. With two two year olds in the house I generally skip messy as much as possible, steering clear of sauces and dips at all costs. But kids will be kids, and sometimes you just have to let them get messy and a little bit crazy. I wanted to come up with a edible finger paint for the kids. Something that was safe for the little ones, odorless, and free to make! It was so easy to make, and saying it was a sucess with the kids would be a bit of an understatement. I had to pull the kids away from it eventually so I could make dinner. Wanna make some?
Here's what you will need:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup warm water
2-6 tablespoons cold water
food coloring
a few small bowls
paper or glass plates to paint on
Mix the flour, cornstarch, and sugar in a bowl. Then add 1 cup warm water. Add in 1 tablespoon of cold water at a time until desired thickness. I used 3 tablespoons of cold water, I liked it not to thin and not to thick. It will get a little thicker as it sits.
Seperate it into a few little bowls and add food coloring. Wa-la! Now you've got edible finger paints...that taste kinda like pancake batter. So if some (or a lot) slips into the kiddos mouth no problem.
Here's the twist I put on it! I went to my fridge and cupboard and picked out small bits of foods we had to use as brushed and stamps. Easy, free, and edible! This gave the project a whole new twist then just using hands and brushes. I wish we had some cooler foods....but I used what we had on hand. They were fun to make cool prints and such with.
These little bits of left over green onions actually turned out to be the favorite. They were like little edible paint burshed. Seriously fun.
Strawberries made awesome heart prints.
And rice crispy bits had cool texture.
And here's one more twist. You can use regular paper, it dries really well. But we end up with a gazillion papers and many of them get tossed, the fridge is only so big. So instead I gave my daughter a big white serving tray to paint on. This way she could paint to her hearts desire, when her plate was full I sprayed it off and she started in again!
My 4 year old had a blast. At first she was so neat about it. She used all the little foods and made prints and cute little pictures.
After awhile she got silly and really started finger painting!
I love to use things like this as a learning experience as well. We grouped some of the foods (fruits...veggies), matched colors, made patterns, and painted out letters, numbers and words. Crazy fun.
While we were cleaning up I turned around to this face!
Honestly, I just laughed. Still not sure how this came about!
As far as clean up....a breeze! Everything wiped right off. I was pleasantly please to find no coloring on the kids hands, and no smell like when using regular paint. I simply sprayed the dishes off in the sink and stuck them in the dish washer. As for clothes, I put them in the wash and it all came off, but just incase I would put play clothes on the kiddos. It's safe to say there will be lots of painting in our future. I like this just as mush as the sidewalk chalk paint.
I hope you have as much fun as we did with this, and don't forget I love to see pictures!