Today is just gorgeous outside and I wanted to get the kids out to do a big messy project. I was going to have them finger paint at their picnic table but it really needed a good cleaning since it has been outside all winter. Then the brilliant idea of using the bath tub paints we made in the past came to me. I mixed up a batch of finger paints (1 cup clear dish soap, 7 TBSP cornstarch, separate into bowls, add food coloring… btw, I added 2 extra TBSP of cornstarch this time and liked it better) and we headed outside to clean the picnic table. Not only did they have a blast finger painting, they practiced writing words in the paint (nice school tie in) and they cleaned everything in site! I followed along behind them with the hose set to power wash. Now everything on our deck is sparkly clean and ready for many hours enjoying the bbq.
NOTE: All was well until Pixie decided to clean the dog when I had my back turned. LOL! I ended up with a half sudsy, half muddy, annoyed schnauzer. But other than that it was a great way to make a mundane chore a lot of fun.
This week’s Unplugged Challenge theme was Smooth. The first thing that came to mind was finger paints. I decided to do something different though and we made our own bath tub finger paints. We ended up with very slippery, smooth kiddos ;). You know the old expression… Smooth as a baby’s bottom!
I googled bath tub paints and ended up combining a few directions to accommodate what we had in the house. No shaving cream and I wasn’t about to use up our California Baby shampoo (although if we do this again in the future I will definitely use a tear-free clear shampoo instead of the dish soap – we got some bubbles in the eyes!).
Ingredients:
1 cup mild clear dish washing soap or baby shampoo
5 TBSP cornstarch
food coloring
Directions:
Mix slowly mix in corn starch to dish washing soap until you get the right finger paint texture. It should be thick enough to not be drippy. Divide into separate containers (you can use ice cub tray for small amounts of lots of colors). Add food coloring to get desired colors.
Before we cleaned up we took some prints of the kids work. I think the tile pattern looks pretty cool. The food coloring cleaned up with no problems… my grout looks better than before. We used some store bought bath crayons before and they left color in the grout. Please note: This does produce a lot of bubbles when you start cleaning it up.
