A wet and crafty time

It's summer reading program time. At our local library this means reading 20 minutes a day for 10 days, turning in a log and getting a prize. It also means story time at the local water park or story time at the library. We choose the library because I just don't want to deal with having to leave the water park by a certain time with my little mermaid, or risk a meltdown versus paying the day use rate for the park. Fairly standard summer reading program stuff. 

Weekly storytime is a program we attend all year long. They have a theme of the day with 3 books, a handful of songs and rhymes, and a puppet show. The whole thing lasts about 30 minutes, which is perfect for the 1-5 year range it's aimed at. They pass out song sheets with a list of suggested titles to further explore the theme at home. But my favorite thing by far is the play to increase literacy ideas on the back of the sheet. Since this week's theme was bath time stories, the play idea was obviously homemade bath tub paints. 

We moved into our house a little over a year ago and inherited the last guy's kitchen cleaners. Being am Eco-friendly family, we haven't used his dish soaps at all. Well, we did use one bottle of dish soap to make bubbles and today we used the other to make the paint. A bit of soap, some cornstarch, a few drops of food coloring and we have a rainbow of bath time magic. 

We just got back from a preschool craft class at the rec center earlier in the week that featured finger paints, so this activity worked well on a hot Friday afternoon after grocery shopping all day. Not to mention that my painter is also my fish, what better way to mix her favorite activities than a cool bath and Wall paints??

Naturally I helped a bit, but she thoroughly enjoyed the freedom to get messy and create! 

Add a warm shower and a rag, and my bathtub actually came out cleaner in the end

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I'm sure you can find recipes for this stuff all over Pinterest and other craft center blogs. I won't clutter the interwebs with a repeat recipe, but I will pass on a tip from my childern's librarian: food coloring works the best as a paint dye. Some mixes call for tempura paints or other color additives, stick with the food coloring. And let the kids mix it in. It's fun to watch the paint turns colors as you stir!