Home > Preschool Ideas > Taste Safe Finger Paints Recipe for Babies and Toddlers

Taste Safe Finger Paints Recipe for Babies and Toddlers

Painting with Babies and Toddlers isn’t just a visual activity or process art it’s sensory and it can start when they are young – we’ve shared before our first forays into painting with our 6-month-old with some easy edible paints and now we’re sharing our recipe for homemade baby safe paint that is taste safe so ideal for a multisensory experience for the babies and toddlers and perfect for painting with baby.

Taste Safe finger paints in baby food jars to make and use with babies and toddlers for their first art experiences.
Taste Safe Paint made in the kitchen ideal for use with babies and toddlers

The first explorations into mark marking for babies are with food but where do you go from there? You can easily make your own finger paints at home and that way you know exactly what materials go into the paints.

What you need to make Taste Safe Baby Finger Paints

We have included affiliate links to products and resources that we recommend within this activity post.

A collection of glass baby jars to store your homemade taste-safe finger paints.

Old clothes for your toddler or baby to wear to paint in

A set of homemade finger paints in the 3 primary colours -> Go to the recipe and instructions here
set of baby food jars filled with colourful homemade taste safe baby friendly finger paints
Baby Food Jars make ideal containers to store the baby safe finger paints in.

Sensory Finger Painting with Babies

Ok – first I should say this is more of baby exploring paints and colours rather than painting anything as at 10 months she is way too young to expect to make marks or produce anything instead I use the finger paints as a sensory experience  – utilizing her sight, touch and surprisingly smell (oh and in my daughters case also taste!)

10-month-old baby exploring colour mixing on the high tray using homemade paints
Baby using homemade finger paints on the high chair tray to explore colours and touch in a sensory painting experience.

I put some of the paints on her high chair tray and kept them separate so part of her play would be mixing the colours together which of course she did once she had had a good feel of the paints. She loved the jelly-like feel of the paints and enjoyed squishing them between her fingers – it was interesting as well to see her play with the different colours – she was drawn first to the red and then blue and green with yellow being the last for her to play with.

Just a warning – don’t do this with liquid food colouring if you are about to go out anywhere as although the paint was easy to clean off the high chair tray and high chair – it wasn’t so easy to clear off of T and until she had a long soak in the bath she was dyed a lovely shade of red.

Young toddler playing with homemade paints on her high chair tray exploring mixing of colours using this easy taste safe recipe.
10-month-old baby girl playing with homemade baby-friendly paint exploring colour mixing and sensory play.

What to Read Next!
Looking for more taste-safe sensory play check out our Rainbow Spaghetti Recipe ideal for adding to sensory tubs and bins.

Materials Needed for Painting with Toddlers


Do what I say and not what we did provide your baby or toddler with a coverall – the clothes that my daughter is wearing in the pictures above NEVER recovered from the experience of painting the first time and became her “painting clothes”. A coverall like this one is ideal as it will cover the body and arms preventing clothes from being stained.


We stored our paints in a mish-mash of jars that I had leftover from weaning my two – a set like these glass baby food jars are ideal for keeping your baby food in and also great for storing the paints (I even use ours now in my craft supplies to store buttons and ribbons).


Protect your floor and invest in a messy mat – I was so thankful that we had these. They are still used now by my kids as a table covering when they do art and crafts on our dining room table.

Recipe for Baby-Friendly Paints

Simple Recipe for Taste Safe finger paints ideal for a sensory painting experience with babies and toddlers

Taste Safe Baby Finger Paints

Cerys Parker
Simple Recipe for Taste Safe finger paints ideal for a sensory painting experience with babies and toddlers made with ingredients from your kitchen cupboard
4.82 from 33 votes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Course Play Recipe
Servings 5 Small Baby Food Jars

Ingredients
  

Instructions
 

  • Add 1 cup of cold water to the corn flour in a bowl and mixed it together.
  • Then using freshly boiled water I added a cup at a time to the water/corn flour mix and mixed it together.
  • Put this mix into a saucepan over a heat and stirred it until it became a consistency of custard.
  • Add liquid food colouring to get your desired colours.
  • Store in a clean jar and these will last between 2 and 3 weeks.

Notes

Use mix once cool and hand over to your baby and toddler to experience the sensation of painting and talk about the colours. See how to create a sensory art experience with your baby.
Keyword Baby-Safe Paint, Edible Paint, Taste-Safe Paint
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Simple Recipe for Taste Safe finger paints ideal for a sensory painting experience with babies and toddlers
Collage of taste-safe paints in jars and being used by a 10-month-old baby girl in her high chair

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

17 Comments

  1. I was just thinking of what activity I could recommend for her 8 month old. I think this is it! Thanks for sharing. šŸ™‚

  2. I find the food coloring will come out of counters if you do a mix of baking soda and lemon juice and let it sit for several minutes.

    I just love how you are exploring art with your baby!!!

  3. I love how bright your colors turned out! US food coloring stains even high chair trays, so I rarely use it for any craft projects…

    1. Our high chair tray was well and truely stained or at least appeared to be – but I use milton spray once a day to clean it and I find that removes every and all stains (works on coffee stains in cups as well)

    2. I was wondering if corn starch work or do I have to use corn flour

      1. You can use corn starch. You are not limited to corn flour. In fact, I have never tried to use anything but come starch and my finger paints have always turned out well.

        1. In the United Kingdom, we call corn starch corn flour. I believe it’s exactly the same thing.

  4. T looks like she’s having a great time Did she end up with a muddy brown colour?

  5. Fabulous! Nothing quite like a bit of fingerpainting with homemade paint!

    Thank you for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

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