Colours for baby – homemade paints

Published 7 November 2014 ● Last Updated on 6 April 2021

39,720 – That’s the number of babies born in Singapore last year. And I suspect that’s also the number of mothers in Singapore stressing out over raising their kids right as I type this!

Thankfully, the joys of motherhood are equal to its challenges. Even though aisles of Baby Einstein, hours of prodigy TV shows and shelves of helicopter mother books create niggling doubts in our minds about how good we are, even one hour of pure fun puts the stress at rest.

So this week, I’m sharing a recipe of painting and fun (yes, and learning too!) inspired by The Imagination Tree. Colours are edible (though not recommended eating 🙂 ) so don’t worry about baby safety and just try this at home!

photo credit: Anuja

Here’s how [ingredients in bold]:

• Boil 5 cups of water, and then leave on gas on medium heat
• Mix 2 cups cornstarch [or cornflour] and 1 cup cold water. Whisk out the lumps with a fork
• Add the cornstarch mix into the heated water, stirring all the while, till it thickens to a custard-ish consistency
• Let cool. And then call your kids!
• Help your tots scoop out the mix into glass jars [we recycled our babyfood jars]
• Create a palette with drops of food colouring OR use foods with strong colour [I used turmeric powder and some raspberries for yellow and red. You could also try cocoa powder or chocolate to create brown if you have already introduced your child to it]. Children absolutely love to get their hands on brushes and mix the potions.

This was the first time my twins got their hands onto paint [they were less than a year-old when we tried it] and it gave us a fantastic hour of messy memories. Seeing the process of creating paint, toying with its textures, using their fingers and brushes to create a something new, and even tearing up all the paper at the end: it was a rewarding, involving experience for them, one that I’ll be happy to repeat again.*

And the added bonus – Great photo opportunities!

*To reuse the paints, store in the fridge. As cooking materials were used, do not store for long and check for fungus development especially if you used short-expiry materials for colours [such as raspberry].

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