Corn Syrup Painting

Corn Syrup Painting

You will need:

Corn syrup

Basting or other type of brush

Food coloring

Cardstock or posterboard cut to desired size

Fingers

Steps:

1. Using your brush, liberally coat the entire sheet of card stock or poster board with corn syrup.

2. Drip food coloring, one drop at a time, anywhere on the corn syrup.

3.  Watch as it spreads out and changes colors

and/or

use your fingers to draw designs.

4.  Allow to air dry. 

Notes: The corn syrup will remain tacky when it is dry.  It will also hold its beautiful glossy finish.

The food coloring stains fingers unless taken care of quickly, but hey, isn't that what art is all about?

Source: The Everything Toddler Activities Book

My 2-year old loved this project.  He is so funny, he doesn't like to get his fingers dirty, so he opted to use a paintbrush.  The paintbrush smeared the colors together more than his fingers, so we ended up with brown tones rather than the vibrant colors that come with finger painting. 

Watch how the colors change colors when they spread out on the corn syrup.

This would be a good activity to talk about mixing primary colors to make secondary colors.