Painting with Baby

I will be linking up with Mandy over at House of Rose, for her Inspire Me Please link up.

So for a while now I have been wanting to do an art project with Annabelle.  Her Mimi got me a cool shadow box to display artwork that I have been wanting to fill.  Then yesterday I began decorating my mantel for Valentines Day.  As I was looking for things to use I realized that shadow box would be great to use.  Here it is empty.

Most of my ideas however would be better suited for toddlers and above.  I googled and pintrest-ed, but was never able to find anything I really liked.  Most projects involved painting that baby’s hands or feet and stamping them on paper.  I wanted a project that Annabelle could be more of a participant in.  While looking for “edible paint” recipes I came across this post from the blog At the Butterfly Ball.  It seemed like a great non-toxic recipe to use, however I was still leery of Annabelle putting it in her mouth.  Then today I ran across the blog Paint and Prozac and this post about doing crafts with babies. These four ideas were genius!  I was like “why didn’t I think of that?!” (especially since I am an education major, have my masters in early childhood education and have worked at a daycare).  I decided to do the paper in the bag art project with Annabelle.  I cut the paper into a heart shape and used pink, purple and red for the colors.  Annabelle seemed to enjoy herself.  I loved letting her explore the squishy-ness of paint and talking with her about the colors.

I am pretty happy with how the heart turned out, although it is taking a long time to dry.  I am thinking of hosting an infant play date with my moms group and letting them all explore. Hope you all have a fabulous day!