Clubhouse Paint, Just add Muscle

Today being Valentine's Day, we were definitely going to enjoy creating Valentine masterpieces for the people we love. To me this meant it was the perfect day to introduce another another new paint to the Clubhouse.

The Art table had our card stock paper, different colors and sizes. Crayons, markers, glue sticks, hearts and heart shaped cookie cutters were also available. I wanted the kids to be a part of mixing the colors and making the paint, so I had a variety of food coloring and little cups full of corn syrup.

Letting the kids add a few drops of food coloring to each container of corn syrup, they were able to make a variety of colors. They mixed red and blue to make purple. They mixed red, blue and green to come up with a "chocolate brown" color. They also left a few without color, liking the "invisible" paint idea.










Once all the colors were mixed, they used the heart shaped cookie cutters to paint hearts. Cookie cutters make pretty good stencils!


















After the hearts were painted, we went outside and got involved in a pretty wild game of baseball. I blame the Pitcher for all of the high flying balls.
Yes, I was the pitcher :)


By the time we were done with our baseball game and a quick snack, the hearts were dry. Now the kids got back to work, using the glue sticks to add glitter hearts and Valentine banners I had cut out of an old scrapbooking kit.

Then, the painting continued. At this point the corn syrup paint had thickened somewhat, so the kids had to work a little harder to mix it, and the paint strokes required a little more effort to get the paint all over the paper. This made these kids want to work harder to cover up just about every inch of white paper in color. They were working hard and extremely focused.

"I'm using my big muscles!" (Let the bodybuilding competition begin...)

"I can paint a lot because I have strong muscles!" (Yes, this is where a little bit of flexing started to take place.)

"You need more muscles to paint with the color Green." (For some reason, that particular color had thickened up a bit more than the rest.)

This is just another reason I am excited to explore many different paint recipes in the classroom. The activities become that much more stimulating, and the kids get that much more involved. Suddenly painting was a sport and I was surrounded by athletes. Amazing what a few items from the pantry can do, no?

In the end the creations dried bright, shiny, textured and colorful. They were very proud of their work, and that is always the best part.

The photos never capture the actual shine in a painting, but these were taken once the paintings were completely dry, and they still look wet. Now that's shiny!

The heart shaped cookie cutters will probably be retired later this week, but the Corn Syrup Paint is definitely here to stay!

Hope your Valentine's Day was as colorful as ours,

Ms. Liz