Toddler Approved Valentine's Activity

Valentine's Day is coming up quick... only one week away now. I must say, I'm feeling like a bit of a newbie these days. I haven't made a big deal out of Valentine's Day in a long time. B and I never really celebrated it, but I feel that now that we have Halle, we can really make it fun and celebrate it in our own way. So, I got things started on Monday by whipping up an activity with Halle at home... some DIY finger paint. It didn't go quite as I planned, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

My initial plan was to use this recipe and make some pink, red and purple finger paints and have Halle paint a few pictures. I thought I could turn them into cards for B and some other family members and send them out to them. Well, with that recipe, the paint didn't thicken for me (it says right in it some people don't get it to thicken). So I read this recipe as well, and decided to try and heat the mix in a sauce pan on the stove. WELL, it worked, but I think I had the temp on too high and it made my paint a little thicker than I had planned. No worries, it's more meant to be a fun activity for Halle, so I decided to run with it. I whipped out my food colouring and got to mixing. My final colours are below...

You can see above just how thick it was. More like an extra soft play dough than finger paint, but again, I just decided to go ahead and see how this experiment would go. Since we don't have a painting smock for Halle yet, I just took of what she was wearing, sat her in her high chair with a piece of paper and plopped some of the "goop" onto the paper. She's not really into getting her fingers messy, so she needed a little extra encouragement to really get in there.

The whole experience didn't last too long... but it was also only her first time trying finger paints. I'll definitely get her to give it another go again soon. Maybe her thoughts will change?

As far as saving this "artwork" or giving it to someone for Valentine's Day... well it's a bit too "blobby" and the parts where she didn't really "smush" the paint in are actually cracking a little bit. Maybe with our next attempt at finger paint?

Have you ever tried to make your own finger paints? Success or fail? Do you have some of your own Toddler Approved crafts or activities for Valentine's Day that you'd like to share? I'm always looking for new and fun things to do with Halle!