Thursday, June 3, 2010

Art project!

Today I wanted to do something really different.  Maybe it was crazy, but I think it was crazy awesome!  I made homemade finger paints for Lincoln.  Two reasons, one, I did not want to go to the store, and two, how fun is that!
It took about 15 minutes start to finish, that includes mixing, cooking, coloring.  I learned many things when I worked at the Montessori school.  One of them was how to prepare for an art project with toddlers.  This art project the first with Lincoln, was no exception to the rule of Be prepared.

So after I made the paints, I set up the painting area complete with newspaper to protect the floors, and a bowl of water and towel for quick and easy clean up!
Then I just had to wait for Lincoln to wake up so that we could paint!!!
He was pretty interested in the newspaper.  So he played with that until I got the plastic wrap off the top of the paints.  Once I got the paints out and in his reach he had a great time of squishing the paint around the construction paper.  Much to my surprise his attention for this project lasted just as long or longer than any of the 2 year old kids that I had the chance to paint with!  I was pretty excited.
The recipe for the paint was so easy.
You will need a few things that I would guess are already in the pantry.

recipe for finger paint:
3 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 cups of cold water

Mix sugar and cornstarch in a pot, turn on heat to low-med.  Add water, stir, cook until thickens, about 7-10 minutes.  Don't over cook it or your paints will be too thick.  Pour into muffin tin, cool then color as desired.  This would be great with toddlers that want to help make their own colors.  
Easy and Fun project for a rainy day.

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