Scented Finger Paint For Fall

I made the girls a batch of fall scented finger paint, today (probably because of all the wonderful scented play dough, I've seen this week - thanks to Little Page Turners, and Super Heroes & Princesses).

It's the same recipe we've used for finger paint in the past - 1/2 cup cornstarch, 4 tablespoons sugar, and 2 cups of water cooked over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it starts to thicken.

But, instead of mixing it with Kool-Aid for scents, I used some fall spices, like cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, ginger, a little apple cider mix, and a tablespoon of brewed orange spice tea.

I blopped the cooked painted right on top of the spices...

...then added a few drops of food coloring to each bowl (fall colors of course), and we were good to go. I left the drops of dish soap out this time, because the paint smelled so good, I wasn't sure I could keep them from sampling it. But, the clean up was still quite simple, even without the soap.

My initial thought was the girls could just cover pages in swirly mixtures of paint, and we could cut them into leaf shapes, to make a nicely scented garland, or something like that. But, the girls wanted to make pictures, so we switched to fall trees.

I showed them how to paint trunks, and branches, and then they added leaves, and grass.

They tried big gloppy leaves...

...and little dotted leaves...

...and even made some hand print trees.

They enjoyed the entire process so much, in fact, that I now have a forest of fall trees, drying on the table.

The kitchen has never smelled so good.

It's great to be a homeschooler.