Delicious art made by an adorable toddler? Yes. Please.
Wanna know a secret to super successful toddler activities? Do the unexpected.
Like painting the bath tub with Cool Whip. Who could have seen that coming on a normally super boring “wash rinse repeat” type day.
Ok ok, so Cool Whip is not the healthiest option on Earth but it is a tasty one (you can’t deny that). You can also do this with shaving cream although it will leave your bathroom smelling like a man.
What an easy bath activity!
Cool Whip Painting was a fantastic bath tub activity for my toddler and occupied him for approximately 49 hours. That might be slight hyperbole. It felt like 49 hours, it was actually about 30 minutes but COME ON. You know that is a long time for a toddler to stay 100% occupied so I maintain that my original 49 hours estimate was not far off.
For how long my toddler played this activity, the 3 minutes of set up time was well worth it.
Setting up cool whip painting is a snap.
Materials:
(this list contains affiliate links)
- Cool Whip
- food coloring
- paint brushes
Here’s what we did: I took my tub of delicious unhealthy goodness (aka Cool Whip) and put a spoonful in each slot of my cupcake tin. I mixed each dollop with a few squirts of food coloring. My toddler (2.5 years) actually “helped” and “assisted” in the set up so we can call this project phase 1.
The “paint” and the toddler went into the tub and let the games begin (project phase 2).
Process art + sensory + bath tub activity = awesomeness
In my experience, the Cool Whip Paint does not stain either the toddler or the tub. I haven’t had any food coloring related accidents – everything is diluted enough to rinse right off.
Obviously, Cool Whip paint was eaten during this activity but I will say that the winner of “Who Ate the Most Paint” was Mommy. Send me my trophy. And some literature on dieting.
The paint went on great and clean up was an absolute breeze and the stuff messy toddler activity dreams are made of.
How we ended this activity
As if we hadn’t already had plenty of sugar, we finished the activity with a Popsicle bath so I could get the tub, the toddler, and the mess from making the paint cleaned up. Sometimes this is what mornings look like and I promise we had salads for lunch (that’s a lie).
Cool Whip painting is our favorite way to bath tub paint. It’s good paint and it’s delicious. What more could you want in life?
Think you’ll try Cool Whip painting?
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Katie Parker says
I love this! We have done homemade shaving cream bath paint (with great success), but never Cool Whip. I look forward to trying this!
I am working on a blog post about a Bathtime Story Extension for the book, The Noisy Paintbox. May I link to this post?
Steph says
So much fun! I work with infants and toddlers, so I love having ‘taste safe’ options, even if they aren’t choices I’d make to actually feed them. Thanks for sharing!