Taste-safe, Messy Fun with Condensed Milk Paint

When you have 2 preschoolers and a baby at home, safe, entertaining activities are a must! Condensed Milk Paint is definitely both of those.

Notice I didn't say clean. While clean activities are wonderful, this is not one of them. If you have ever used condensed milk for anything you know it is thick and very sticky! So while this is a really straightforward activity it is a very sticky one as well!

Ingredients for Condensed Milk Paint

Sweetened Condensed Milk
Food Coloring
Thick Paper (we used watercolor paper)
Paintbrushes (if desired)

To make the paint all you have to do is mix the condensed milk with the food coloring. Easy Peasy.

I chose to mix our paint in an ice cube tray. I added milk to a few sections being sure to leave empty sections for mixing; my kids love mixing. Then I added red, yellow, and blue food coloring to a couple of spots in each tray.

Creating Condensed Milk Paintings

I mixed the colors into the condensed milk with toothpicks and handed them to the girls to paint with.

Again we used watercolor paper since it is much thicker than normal paper and holds up better to such thick paint.

The girls enjoyed painting with the paintbrushes...

...and mixing all the colors.

Mixing colors is one of those hands-on art activities that kids love (especially if you make it messy), and it can be used to teach primary, secondary, and even tertiary colors (if your kids are up to it). Mine were not, but since we started with primary colors we did talk about those and reviewed which primary colors mix to get which secondary colors.

The best part about painting with condensed milk is that it is taste safe, so even babies can use it to paint.

The bad part about painting with condensed milk is that it actually tastes pretty sweet, so the kids may want to eat it more than paint with it.

I know I mentioned before that it was sticky, and by the end of our painting session so was he. It's a good idea to make sure you leave enough time for a bath after this activity!

Luckily, once the condensed milk paint dries it isn't really sticky anymore, but it does stay shiny!