Sticky Paint

Recently I've been introduced to Pinterest.  Pinterest is an amazingly awesome, horribly addicting little website.  It's basically an online pin board where you can pin anything on the web.  It's a lot like twitter as in that you can follow anyone you want and you see what they are pinning. They're are amazing ideas from everything to fashion to food.   Basically it's a mass of good ideas all in one place and you feel like you just can't take your eyes off of it until you've seen it all.  Lately I've been spending a lot of time on this site (and on the internet in general) and I came across this amazing little blog called Play at Home Mom.  I was simultaneously excited that I had found this blog, and guilty that I spend too much time on the computer when I should be playing with my kids.  I vowed then to get off my bum and spend the better part of my days OFF of the computer.  This will get increasingly difficult as I am getting really busy with photography, but I promised myself that I will do at least one activity from this site a week with my kids. 

The first thing I wanted to try was something I already had everything for.  Sticky Paint.  All it is is corn syrup and food coloring.  I had an expired bottle of corn syrup up in my pantry and was excited to use it because I just hate throwing things out.  I used my large muffin tin as our paint cups, and got started!

I had Kate stir the food coloring into the syrup.  She was amazed just by this!  Notice how clean and innocent she looks at this moment.  She doesn't stay that way for long.

 Max had fun in his own little way. 

After painting a few paintings with just the paintbrush she realized that she could make a bigger mess of things, and mommy didn't get mad! 

 I tried to use this as a learning exercise to help her learn her colors.  She's doing a little better.  She can though, hear any Disney song and tell you what movie it's from.  So that's something.

By the end she was completely covered from head to toe in colorful shiny gooey-ness.  She played with this paint nonstop for about 3 hours this morning, and loved every minute.  Telling her that is was time for lunch was the only thing I could say to get her to stop and take a bath.

This activity was so much fun, and so simple!  We'll definitely be doing this one again, especially since I still have more than half of that expired corn syrup bottle.  It looks really messy but was surprisingly easy to clean up, and even came out of her clothes with a little stain remover.  I would still suggest wearing play clothes though, and I think I'm going make (or buy, who am I kidding?) Kate a little smock to wear for our future art projects.  I LOVE the Play at Home Mom blog.  Go check it out!  You won't be disappointed!

http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/