It has been rainy here. For days. Days and days on end. And not just rain. Heavy torrential downpour rain. With lightning. That means, the kids have been sitting inside. For almost a week. A WEEK. It is summer time and the girls are stuck inside together. This is not our idea of summertime fun. We are used to being outside swimming, fishing, playing at the creek, looking for critters. Instead, the girls are inside the house, and working on each other’s nerves.
I have tried to think of everything possible to help them get along. But they are slowly but surely running out of things that can keep them occupied. The craft supplies have taken a massive hit. They are bored with their board games. They have colored all of the coloring pages that I printed. Then I remembered homemade finger paints. SCORE!
Homemade finger paints as easy to make. The girls can have fun coloring them. Then they get to paint. And I have never met a kid who didn’t love to finger paint. The ingredients are so simple and they are most likely already in your cabinets. Plus, they are nontoxic and even safe to eat, although I certainly wouldn’t recommend it because they won’t taste good.
Homemade Finger Paints
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 cup of cornstarch
cold water
food coloring
Containers
Directions:
In a saucepan, mix the sugar and corn starch together.
Stir in cold water.
Heat over medium heat until the mixture starts to thicken. It gets thicker after it cools.
Separate the mixture into small containers.
Add a few drops of food coloring and stir.
The thing the girls love most about homemade finger paints, is mixing the colors. They get to make whatever colors they want. They can make the colors as vibrant or as pastel as they like. We used 8 drops of color for each container. I recommend starting with 4 and adding as you need.
The girls were very excited to try out their new paints. We had some old packing paper from our recent move, so they had huge paper to make their pictures on.
After painting a few pictures with the girls, I left them on the front porch to paint. I needed to make some lunch and get some things ready for the afternoon. What could it hurt? They could paint away and I’d be back to paint some more later. Well, they painted. They had fun. I could hear the giggles. This is what I found.
Whether it is a rainy afternoon, just because the kids want to paint and you don’t have paints on hand, or you are looking for a nontoxic, safe finger paint, this recipe is perfect.
Written by About a Mom contributor, Debi. Debi can also be found as the writer behind The Spring Mount 6 Pack, where she shares ways to Simplify The Things You HAVE To Do, So You Can Do The Things You WANT To Do, and Eat, Sleep, Travel, Repeat, talking about food, travel and fun.
