Painting With Tea

We have done this kind of activity with spices before but today we tried something new and used tea leaves! I am constantly drinking tea, so I am surprised that I never thought to use the wet tea leaves before. We normally use cinnamon since we love the smell, but coffee grinds will also work.
Simply mix a small amount of water into the spices, ground coffee or tea leaves (for the last two I would suggest using them first so you aren't actually wasting them). This kind of activity can also be used to teach colours, but mainly we were doing it to explore the textures and watching the tea stain the paper. In the future I will now be saving all my used tea leaves to dry and save for this project.
We used an old fruit tray to hold the tea and water. Bean enjoyed lifting the tray and moving it around to watch the water slide and mix with the tea leaves. This was a good exercise to teach her coordination to prevent the water from spilling over the side.

Bean added her Hello Kitty toys to splash around in the "mud" as she called it :)

Munchkin was all about painting his face instead of the paper.

Bean being silly.

Munchkin tasting the tea paint.

Playing in the mud.

Suggestions for colours - spice painting
Brown - cinnamon
Orange - turmeric
Yellow - ground mustard seed
Red - paprika

We normally use powdered sugar for White and dried basil for Green.

{If you enjoyed this post, please consider following me on Facebook and Pinterest. Thank you!}