Edible Paint

Munchkin loves to paint, but he still puts things in his mouth. That means that there have been a few times that he has dunked his paintbrush into a cup of regular paint and proceeded to feed himself.. He never much cared for the taste, which is lucky, but I don't want to deprive him of the fun experience either. Normally we make our paints in the kitchen, but whenever Bean receives paints for Christmas or her birthday, we have to shelf it until we can manage to find a time that Munchkin will go down for a nap and she can enjoy them without him eating them on her.

Thus we make edible paints! This way they can both enjoy painting and I don't have to worry about either of them getting it in their mouths. Our favourite base for edible paint is yogurt (we use vanilla Chobani Greek yogurt), then we add about a tablespoon of milk and a few drops of food colouring. After that you just mix it all together and serve it in small bowls. We have a round plastic tray from the Dollar Tree that we use to paint on. Today we made yellow, green, blue, purple and red. We also added some sprinkles that were leftovers from decorating Christmas treats (although they dumped them out and ate them rather than using them to sprinkle in their paint cups).

Munchkin is always delighted when he can taste the colours he's painting with. We didn't add any flavouring today but sometimes we do. It is also interesting to give them different things to paint with instead of the brushes, like cinnamon sticks and pretzel rods, or nuts like walnuts and almonds. They will swirl them around on the tray and watch for the designs they leave behind. You can also give them spoons to practice scooping and feeding themselves.

Pudding is also a fun edible paint. We love mixing vanilla pudding with crushed chocolate chip cookies and chocolate pudding with crushed Oreos, then driving through it with construction trucks and hunting for gummy worms and digging for buried treasure. :)

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