Bug and Monkey Mama: Finger-painting with Pudding

Pretty much every day Alexandra wants to get out her paints, crayons, and other art supplies to paint and color. Well a few days ago she was asking about finger paints and since we don't have any at home I thought I'd make some vanilla pudding, color it, and let her go crazy. I remember as a kid using pudding to paint and the best part was that you could like your fingers too!

So first we made some pudding together and Alexandra added all of the ingredients and whisked it well. Once it thickened up I added some of my icing color to the pudding. I definitely added too much color to two of the cups and if we used the paint our hands were going to be stained blue and pink. So I tried again and added just a tiny dash - I forgot that a little bit of that icing color goes a super long way.

I thought this activity would be fun for both Alexandra, who is 4, and Camden, who is 17 months. I mean Camden is always trying to put the crayons in his mouth so I thought painting with pudding would be perfect. As Alex began Camden was just finishing up his lunch. I gave him a little pudding as part of his lunch and then got him out of his high chair and sat him at the table. Well he didn't really want to paint - he just wanted to eat it all!

For the paper I used Freezer paper with the shiny side being used as the painting surface. I figured that it wouldn't go through the paper that way and it worked pretty well. Plus, with a quick rub of a paper towel you have a new surface to paint on.

After seeing pictures of the kids painting you'll see why it was a not so normal middle of the day bath time!