With toddlers, you can never be sure what will end up in their mouths. This can make drawing and painting with toddlers and older babies a stressful chore, even if you do choose “safe” commercially sold art supplies.
However, you likely have several alternatives right in your kitchen cabinets to use for art projects with your toddler. For edible art supplies you know will be safe, try these suggestions…
Paint
Almost any thick, creamy food can be used as a very safe finger or brush paint with toddlers. Pudding, white or chocolate, has long been a favorite of child care providers. Vanilla pudding works fabulously with toddlers because it can be easily colored with a drop of food coloring for a rainbow of paint colors (of course, it will all end up black in the end, anyway).
Catsup and mustard are colorful paints, too, and it won’t matter if you baby or toddler has a little taste.
If you are looking for more of a water color for your toddler to experiment with, buy boxes of Jell-O or gelatin mix in a variety of colorful flavors. Mix the powder with hot water to dissolve it to a consistency that provides adequate color and texture. Be sure to let the mixture cool before painting with your toddler or baby.
Dropper art is popular with children and caregivers because it provides not only a fun paint experience, but develops fine motor (finger) coordination as well. With toddlers, mix packets of kool aid in a variety of colors with water, then let them use small eye droppers to drop the colors onto coffee filters. Toddlers will be mesmerized as the filter spreads the liquid color.
Glue and Fun Messes
It’s a basic with papier-mâché – water and flour – and makes a good glue alternative to use with babies and toddlers when you are concerned about them eating the stuff. Simply mix warm water with flour to a somewhat runny consistency, and let your toddler use it to “glue” pieces of paper together. The mixture will not hold heavy objects, but will stick papers when wetted (colorful tissue paper works especially well).
Shaving cream is a famous, fun, messy daycare and preschool project, but with babies and toddlers, ingesting perfumed soapy creams could be a bad idea. As an alternative, use whipping cream. The canned variety will be the easiest to dispense, or use cool whip or a similar whipped topping; cool whip won’t fall as quickly as whipped cream, either.
Cooked pasta is a very safe art supply food for toddlers and young children. They can play with it, mash it, paint with it and more. Cooked spaghetti strings left to dry make for some interesting toddler hanging creations. Overcooked, sticky pastas can be their own mosaic element for toddlers to stick to paper without using any glue at all.
Process, Not Product
In early childhood education and childcare circles, there is a sort of golden rule of child development when it comes to toddlers, preschoolers, and art: it’s the process, not the product.
What does this mean? It means discard all your adult expectations and let the children have fun. In early childhood, children need to develop creativity and learn cause and effect by experimenting with the world around them. Let your toddler play with their art-food products. Let them learn about texture, the way a substance feels, if it sticks, if it doesn’t, if it disappears when it dries…Allow your toddler to use their all their senses, touch, taste, smell, sounds, and sights to figure out the properties on their own level.
In other words, allow your toddler the freedom to grow and learn without your rules. And (unreasonable) limitations. Do not expect your toddler’s art to look like anything, because they don’t. Your youngster is in it for the fun of it, not to create a masterpiece.
With that in mind, set up you art area; usually a high chair with a tray is best for cleanup and damage control, and let your toddler have at it. Using everyday groceries to replace commercial art supplies, you won’t have to worry about hovering to stop a mouthful, and you might just get a few minutes to wash a dish or sweep the floor.
