Art and Play: Painting with Jello

I can't believe it has been over a week since our last post.  It is not that we have not been busy.  Rather, the past week has been jam packed with fun.  Our crafty moms met to make cards and scrapbook, we had a moms night out where we went pottery painting, and we have been up to all sorts of other things like swimming, gym time, and walks.  We also met for our first ever Art and Play event at Enchanted Events.  Art and Play is a monthly time when we get together as a big group to socialize, celebrate major milestones like birth days and births, and make a creation based on momstown's education theme for the month.

Our theme for March is "My Five Senses" and we have been singing songs, reading books, and talking about our sense of touch, our sense of smell, our sense of sight, our sense of sound, and our sense of taste, and at Art and Play we had the opportunity to experience all five of those senses with our activity: painting with jello.

A few hours prior to the event, we mixed different colours of jello (the kind with sugar is sticky, but works best) with about half the amount of water recommended on the packages.  We then divided the "paint" into cups for each painter:

With music playing in the background, our little Picassos got to smell the different flavours of the jello paint, feel its sticky, slightly goopy texture, see its colour and sparkle, and some may have even have tasted it:

While the end result was not quite as bright as if we had used more traditional paint, the process was more than worth it.  As an added bonus, when the creations dried, we could scratch and sniff them, and they sparkled from the sugar crystals in the jello:

After painting, we continued to explore our five senses by playing with balls and balloons, crawling through tunnels (they can be dark inside), trying out different musical instruments, listening to stories and singing songs, and tasting our snacks, and the snacks of our friends.  Enchanted Events regularly hosts children's birthday parties, and you can see how wonderful and magical the space would be for that:

Thanks to the generosity of Enchanted Events, we certainly had a magical time at our Art and Play event, and we are already looking forward to getting together there again in April!