Just in time for Halloween! I'll share the painting activity I did with my daughter as well as some great ideas from around the web for baby and toddler friendly pumpkin painting fun!
Finally! Halloween-time is here!
All the ingredients you'll need for awesome fall themed edible finger paints for babies and toddler
Halloween is by far my favorite holiday of the year! And I'm so happy to share some awesome toddler and baby friendly activities for you to try.
I think it's so important that babies use all of their senses as they play and learn. So for this activity I made sure that the paints we were using were visually appealing, tasty (and safe to eat!), smelled great, and were fun to touch! So what could I use for paint? Pumpkin of course!
Since I'm so Halloween crazy this month, I've been making pumpkin EVERYTHING! I bought tons of cans of pumpkin puree and have been adding it to pancakes, muffins, smoothies, you name it. So when I had a little left-over I thought, "What a great ingredient to make finger paints out of!".
I left one bowl of "paint" just plain pumpkin puree. The next bowl I added some food dye to turn it purple, and I added a little clove spice to make it smell delicious.
I left one bowl plain an added food dye to another
In the middle of making the paints, E decided she wanted to eat some pumpkin! Which is exactly why we do these sorts of things! Babies who are able to explore a variety of smells, tastes and textures turn out to be more adventurous eaters.
The pumpkin puree didn't take to the dye as great as I thought it would, so to make more beautiful colors, I added some cornflour based paints in addition to the pumpkin.
muffin tins are a great way to display finger paint
4 tbsp corn flour
1 cup water
boil on stove stirring constantly until it thickens up
Once off the stove, add more water if you want a more paint-like consistency. I added quite a bit of water to mine.
This is the consistency once it's finished,
don't bake it too long! but if you do, just add water, it's very forgiving
Afterwards I put them in a muffin tin, added more food dye, as well as
Pumpkin pie spice to one, vanilla to another, cinnamon to another, and allspice to one more.
We ended up with some delightfully fragrant paints! We put out a dollar store plastic table cloth and let the girls go for it. They smeared them around, smelled them, tasted them, felt them and had a blast! Clean up was a breeze, just plopped the girls in the tub, and folded up the table cloth and put it in the trash. If it were a sturdier brand (like a shower curtain) I could have hosed it off, but this was from the dollar store and was pretty flimsy.
And now for some other great ideas around the web!
Love this idea from No Time For Flashcards, Pumpkin printing!
And Check out these SLIMY PUMPKINS from Meri Cherry
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