Puffy Paint = Boredom Buster on a Rainy Day

Today I have a four year old and three year old who really want to go outside, but it's raining so that's not a choice and they are getting stir crazy. So, what should we do? We needed a fun activity to distract us from the dreary weather and quick. I thought back to my preschool teaching days and faintly remembered a fun puffy paint recipe. Unfortunately I couldn't find my recipe, but not too worry the mighty internet search finally revealed just the recipe I was looking for. Joshua, Owen and I set to work creating puffy paint. It's a simple recipe - equal parts of glue and shaving cream with a little food coloring added in, just put in a bowl and mix it with an electric mixer. We beat the shaving cream and glue together first (we did add more shaving cream to make it "puffier") then separated it into four bowls and stirred in neon food coloring. The recipe said if you were going to paint with this to put it in squeeze bottles, but we decided we could be more creative if we used paint brushes, besides the paint seemed a bit thick to squeeze out of a bottle and it was too darn messy to get in the bottle to begin with! Joshua and Owen had a great time painting and did so for almost an hour! It was a great activity, very simple recipe and provided lots of creative fun. If only I'd remembered to cover the table and have them wear paint shirts to begin with things might have been a bit cleaner, but hey they had fun and that's all that matters!