Spice Painting (with Edible Glue)

The girls have shown an increased interest in cooking the past couple weeks, so painting with spices seemed appropriate (thanks to Play Create Explore for the idea). It would give them a chance to smell a variety of spices while painting! I wanted Eli to be able to participate too, so I decided to give edible glue a try (in case he ate it). I found a recipe on Sustainableecho. It took me two tried to make it as Eli woke up while the first batch was cooking, but I think it will work!

Edible Glue Recipe

Ingredients

1 C flour
1/3 C sugar
1 1/2 C water
1 t vinegar

Mix the flour and sugar in a saucepan.

Add half of the water and stir until you have a smooth, thick paste.

Add the remaining water and stir until smooth.

Mix in vinegar and stir over medium heat until the glue begins to get thick. Don't stop stirring during this step or you end up with clumps of glue!

Once thickened, remove from heat and allow to cool before transferring to an airtight container.

Spice Painting

For our spice painting we watered down our glue just a bit more and placed it in small dishes. Then I let the girls add some spices! They had fun smelling them all to see which ones we re the best. We selected 10 spices and sprinkled them in our watered down glue. The girls chose cinnamon, ground cloves, dill seed, ginger, mustard, paprika, celery seed, caraway seed, cilantro, and rosemary.

I gave them paper and paint brushes and off they went. I put some on the paper for Eli to play around with his fingers. As expected he tried to taste them all. I eventually gave up on the paper with him and just put some on his tray to play with.

Bria says she painted monsters (one with a baby in its tummy) in her pictures, so of course, Nadia also painted some monsters. Hers have potatoes, jelly beans, and skittles.