Make Rainbow Jars

This is how bad I am at cooking: I can collect six expired spice jars twice a year.  I am much better at using them for playful learning than I am at using them in the kitchen.

I always mean to throw them away to declutter but every time I come close to it, an idea strikes.  Here's one to do on a weekend with an older toddler to learn colors, or with a preschooler for crafty art and hand-control.

There are a few ways to do this.

We watered down the paint, used the dropper to put the color in, capped it and shook the bottle.  This makes a fun process! But don't expect the paint to dry because of all the water.  We left ours out for a week and nothing happened.

The next time we used bigger bottles and didn't add water.  This was a better end-result and spreading thicker paint is a nice exercise in concentration for a preschooler.

Pour paint directly from the bottle, cover the opening (I threw out the lids), and tilt the bottle here and there to spread the paint.  It goes sloooowly so it's a different kind of hand control.

She didn't always pass the patience test.

Here's how much paint it took to go fast enough to cover the bottle:

Finished!

The paint was dry when we checked it after a week.

Poster paint washes off in water, so when we get tired of this we can start a new idea again, but if you want it permanent and non-streaky use acrylic paints.

Right now though it makes me smile.

For more weekend play ideas, see the gallery on the top right of the blog!