Yoghurt painting is one of our staple activities when the children are small. It can be really tricky to find non-toxic paints or ones that are suitable for the under threes, so we’ve found yoghurt mixed with a little food colouring to be a good alternative.
You will need:
- Natural Yoghurt
- Food colouring (we used gel but liquid is better)
- Ice cube tray
- Craft sticks
- Paper and washi tape (optional)
- Bowls
- spoons
Method:
- Pre-mix each colour into a bowl first. If you are at all worried about stains just use a little – the aim here is to have fun and explore rather than worry about colours!
- Spoon the mixture into the ice cube tray.
- Stick a paddle pop stick into the centre of each compartment
- Freeze overnight
Results:
As you can see from the photos above, my youngest two had a lot of fun with this! Mr E (13 months) did of course try to put the paints in his mouth, but because they are all natural, it wasn’t an issue.
Just like all of the activities I share here, supervision is required. I had to stop Mr E from trying to run around with the paint sticks and he would occasionally try to put the whole lot in his mouth. Whenever these situations occurred, I diverted his attention by showing him how to paint.
Z (3.5 years) was obviously more engaged with the actual painting process and happily experimented with the colours.
Creative activities with tabies and toddlers can be tiring – mainly because the set-up tidy-up takes a while and the time spent on the actually activity itself is relatively short, but when I see how well Z interacts with art projects now, i’m reminded that it’s all worth it!
