Paint Recipe for Kids

Playing with paint is one of our family’s favorite Kids Activities.  My kids favorite “paint recipe” by far is homemade tempera – The recipe is super simple, and *super* messy.

Kids Craft:

We recently discovered the joys of painting with eggs and chalk – it’s homemade tempera paint!

We used the leftover scraps from our chalk bin and slivers of chalk pastels.  Chalk Pastels make the most brilliant paint colors!! It was super easy and the kids had fun creating art together.

To prep: Soak your chalk bits in water (keep the colors in separated in the water) for 15 minuets or so, or until slightly “mushy”.  When wet the chalk is easier to break down.

Use a hammer and gently pound the chalk until it is a powdery paste.  You can also just “mush” the chalk stick if it has soaked long enough.  We break our chalk up on our patio and just hose it off when we are done.  If you do not have access to a patio, you can use a Ziploc bag to contain the mess and crush wherever.

Add egg yolk to the powder until it is a paint-able consistency.

WARNING:  If you are concerned about the bacteria risk from eggs you can flash boil them prior to making your paint.  This will pasteurize the eggs and *should* kill off any Salmonella risk – BUT with all things “raw egg” wash your hands and use this paint recipe only with kids who are old enough to avoid eating the paint.

Our kids have as much fun creating the colors as they do painting with them.

More Painting Fun:

If you like this paint recipe, maybe you’ll like some of these color-related kids activities:

• Lots of colorful Craft Ideas for Kids
• Create coffee-filter weather Balloon art
• Fizzing Sidewalk paint – when you spray this paint it bubbles!
• Create paint “skins” by marbling acrylic paint.  This make great homemade window clings!!
• More ideas of ways to play with paint.

…and thanks to Val at Inner Child Fun, if this looks familiar, it’s probably because we featured the same activity in a guest post on her blog last month!  Thanks Val for featuring us.