Puffy Paint

The other day I was over at A Pocketful of Posies blog and I saw that she had made her very own puffy paint. The words puffy paint conjure up images of a grade school version of me decorating t-shirts. I only used neon colors, because my motto at the time was the brighter the better. I knew I had to make this paint with Logan. I should have put something down before starting this project. That was my nice way of warning you that my dining room table is really messy in the following pictures. But I believe that messiness is usually part of the fun.

All our supplies and one eager little boy

The recipe itself is pretty simple. Just add one tablespoon each of flour, salt, and water to each container. Logan did this four times since we made four colors. Next I added a couple of drops of food coloring to each container.

The little guy stirred the colors up.

And then I let him create his masterpieces. I used the back of a cereal box. The paint is thick so I don't know how well it would work with thinner paper.

Once he was finished, we moved the piece of paper to the microwave. We microwaved in 15 second intervals. Most of our pictures only needed 15 seconds. Once hardened and cooled, Logan had a lot of fun feeling his paintings. He declared them, "my bumpy paintings" and immediately hung them on the refrigerator.

Of course, I had to join in on the fun. I created one with his name. This activity would have been fantastic for when I was teaching special education. I think this would be a great way to incorporate a multi-sensory approach to practicing some of those commonly misspelled sight words for older kids.

Have you ever made puffy paint? If not, I definitely recommend giving it a try! 

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