Homemade Finger Paints

This week at Play Group we painted with our fingers.
Believe it or not, finger paint is easy to make with inexpensive items you probably already have in your pantry.
Finger painting is a timeless activity offering sensory input, exploration, and creative expression without the fine motor demand of holding a brush- perfect for toddlers!

You will need:
1/2 cup cornstarch
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups water
1 Tablespoon light corn syrup
Liquid food coloring
Sauce pan
Stove top
Whisk
Containers to store your paint
Paper (we taped ours down to keep it from moving)

• Mix dry ingredients in your saucepan and slowly add water. Heat over medium heat, stirring fairly constantly with a whisk until the mixture is the consistency of finger paint. 
• Remove sauce pan from heat and add corn syrup, stirring well.
• Divide your mixture into your containers. We divided ours into 3 portions. 
• Add food coloring to each container. We added a total of 12 drops of each color to each portion- making red, blue and yellow.
• Although the blue and yellow are in larger containers, they weren't full. The red 4 ounce container was full. We ended up with 4 ounces of each of the three colors. 
• If the paint is too thick, add a bit of water-1/2 to 1 teaspoon. 

The paint cleaned up easily from tables and hands. In case you are wondering, the food dye did not transfer to hands :)

Finger painting is a perfect example of "process oriented art".