Puff paint snow

By megret | December 5, 2008 at 6:45 am | One comment | Learning and doing

After seeing this homemade puff paint recipe on FlipFlops and Applesauce, I knew I had to put it into our “to try” folder. I filed it under “art,” but pulled it out a little earlier than I anticipated. Our “Countdown to Christmas” activity for yesterday was to read books about snow and then make a puff-paint snow scene. This technique would be perfect.

We pulled out our ingredients and I began to mix them in ramekins. We left our first batch white, so as to resemble snow. In retrospective, I should have thought ahead and bought bleached flour to use for this project. (I usually buy unbleached, but this made the mixture a bit more “beige” than it probably would be otherwise.)

Ingredients:
4 T. self-rising flour
4 T. salt
water (as needed)
food coloring (if making colored version — we added ours later)

The kids began to paint with the gloopy, grainy mixture….the brushes got overloaded and hard to handle, but the kids found it funny instead of getting frustrated.

Now for the “science-y” part. We put them into the microwave for 30 seconds so it would puff and set.

It came out just as we hoped! Puffed up and kind of, well, crunchy! It was a neat texture….and a quick transformation. The kids were in awe.

We added some food coloring and then painted some more. Here’s G’s painting of an Oompa Loompa. (Can you tell what another one of his current obsessions is?)