Calla's First Activity: Painting!

Poppy got all excited when I told her we'd be making paints for Calla to try today. Calla's first activity. Wow.

Poppy just loves measuring stuff

Poppy and I made the paint over lunch. She helped to measure and stir everything. We simply mixed 1 cup of corn flour with 1/2 cup of cold water with 2 1/2 cups of hot water. Everything just ended up smooth and consistent, like milk. Not what we wanted. We wanted a more lumpy and gooey texture, kinda like Vaseline. After stirring it over a low fire, we got the exact texture we wanted (we got the recipe from here and halved it)

Then Poppy helped to divide the mixture and scoop it into 4 plastic containers and added a teensy weensy bit of  food colouring to each. 

"What next, Mama?" Poppy asked. Well, now we wait for Calla to wake up from her nap :)

Love love love how pastel and sweet the colours turned out! Don't they look like strawberry yoghurt, guacamole, salmon cream and lemon swirl?

At first she didn't know what we were giggling about. But before she had time to react, Big Sister smeared her hands with a gloopey gooey mess. She just stared at her hands and gave us a "What do you expect me to do with this?" look.

"This looks more appetizing than that cereal thing I've been getting"

Little hands. Love them so much

But after a while, she kinda knew. I'm glad she didn't attempt to put her hands in her mouth (thankfully it's edible paint, but still); instead she went straight for the containers and tried to put those in her mouth. At the end of the session the paint just kinda caked up and she didn't complain at all. Was kinda happy to be a beautiful mess of pastels :)

This is good and really fun for young babies - it lets them explore different textures, and helps improve their gross motor skills. It's also very fun for mums to watch :)