Rainbow Grilled Cheese

A couple years ago, for St. Patrick's Day we made rainbow grilled cheese and I thought it was such a fun idea that could be used any time you want to make lunch more fun!  I had a few people ask how to make it, so I put the instructions here.

Rainbow Grilled Cheese Recipe

All you need to create this colourful meal is bread, butter, white cheese, and food colouring.

Start by grating your cheese (we used havarti mixed with mozarella) and separate into four bowls.  This article recommends some of the best cheeses for melting and getting a stringy effect- which is a big bonus for rainbow grilled cheese sandwiches!

Bubbling Science Experiment

We tried this magic trick and then had some fun with the science behind it. So cool! The girls thought it was great. It was so easy to do and not hard to clean up- go try it! :)



For this trick all we needed was half a cup of vinegar and a spoonful of baking soda (with a little food colouring mixed in ;)

Mini Rainbow Pancakes

Katrina requested pancakes for lunch. We went with it & added food colouring for extra fun. 

If you're looking for other rainbow ideas, there are a bunch in my St. Patrick's Day Ideas Roundup!

A Pinkalicious Afternoon

Talia recently brought Pinkalicious home from her school library.


It's a cute story about a little girl whose mother makes her some very pink cupcakes. The little girl eats too many of them and turns pink! After my mom heard about this story, she told me I needed to make pinkalicious cupcakes with the girls. So, it's been in the back of my mind for a while.

A few days ago, we had my friend's daughter over for an afternoon and I decided it was the perfect opportunity to make pinkalicious cupcakes. We totally did this the easy way- white cake mix, ready-made white frosting, and pink food colouring.

Here's what we did:

1. Dress girls up in aprons
2. Let girls put pink cupcake papers in pan

3. Let each girl add one ingredient to bowl (that's all you need with a mix!)
4. Send girls off to occupy themselves in the playroom while you mix & pour the batter

(these 3 girls were in the living room playing with the cookie set, pretending they were pinkalicious cookies that were turning them pink ;)
5. Let them watch the cupcakes bake

6. Send them off to play for 10 to 15 minutes while you let the cupcakes cool, then either let them help frost them or do it yourself & call them over for a treat!

Salt Painting

We got the idea for Salt Painting from "A Bit of This & A Bit of That". It's really easy & fun!



What You Need:

- Food Colouring (we tried the liquid kind and the gel kind, mixed with water- we liked it the best, because it spread better on the salt)
- Salt
- Glue (we used wet white glue)
- Paper

What You Do:

1. Make a design on the paper with glue (Talia could do it herself, but after a while she wanted to direct me because she had trouble squeezing the bottle for long)
2. Sprinkle salt onto the glue (we did this over a cookie tray, to prevent salt mess everywhere)
3. wet your brush & dab it on the salt lines- watch the colour spread.
4. Repeat! ;)

You can do this for any occasion, or just for fun. We did a fall one, and several random ones- the fun went on for quite a while! :)

Rain Painting!

I saw this fun rain painting idea at Little Page Turners.

You'll Need:

- card stock
- Food colouring
- Rain (preferably not pouring)

Here we are, having fun!


A Tip: Beware the food colouring!!! (Katrina's coat let the colour drip right off, Talia's wasn't exactly a rain coat, so it stayed on hers- I threw it in the wash right away, and luckily saved it! So, I recommend being careful about where you hold the paper- for us, the rain was splattering the food colouring right up, onto their clothes!)

Check out Little Page Turners to see what they did with their finished product! Our's looks cool with all of the colours, but we haven't used it for anything yet! :)

Sidewalk Paint

I love the idea of sidewalk paint! My friend Cheryl posted about making some & when I saw how easy it was to make, I knew we had to do it this summer!

So, we set out to do it & look how fun it looks!



Here's How to Do It:

1. mix equal parts cornstarch & water (I think we did a half of a cup of each and it was just enough for us to play with- when we ran out of it, we were ready to be done). As you can see from the pictures above, Katrina had fun mixing- it's nice that she's old enough to take part now!

2. add food colouring! (we love this part- so fun to mix!) Talia did the colour mixing. We only added one or two drops to each colour, and we made 4 different colours. Most of our paint dried to be almost white, so I'd suggest using a bit more food colouring- just be careful not to go overboard or you'll have some colourful mess ;)

3. Get some brushes, go outside, & be artistic! :)
Talia & Katrina started picking things from the lawn & using them as paint brushes- so creative! ;) You'll also notice that Katrina saw the paint brush & immediately thought nail polish & went to work decorating her toes ;)

This was such a fun activity! Definitely do it!

Want an extra entry in this week's giveaway? Just post a comment on this entry! :)

Mixing Colours and Melting Ice Cubes

This was a great activity because it touched on science, math, colours, patience, colouring in the lines... and it was totally fun!

How To Do It:

1. Add a drop of food colouring to the water in each ice cube, before freezing. (Talia loved getting to add drops of food colouring by herself)

2. Make a paper with math equations for different colour combinations, leaving an empty spot for the answer. (We took this opportunity to talk about what the "+" and "=" signs mean)

3. The next day, fill glasses with ice cubes in different colour combinations & watch to see what colours they make when they melt! (This was fun but took a while, so we added leftover cubes to cups of water for more food colouring fun while we waited)

4. Let your child colour in the answers when it's all finished.

I got this idea from a blog, but I can't remember where now!

Green Breakfast

This photo is from another year, but I found it recently in our family photos on the computer & thought it was a fun idea that I could share on this blog. Have fun making March special with green food colouring! :)

Painting Popcorn to Eat!

You've already heard about Katherine Marie from my first Feature Friday. You know I love her theme of the weeks, and recently we tried her idea of painting popcorn. Check out her Popcorn Theme of the Week for more fun popcorn ideas!



How To Make Edible Paint:

1. Mix food colouring with sweetened condensed milk

2. Supply paintbrush & go for it!

(So easy! So yummy! So fun!)


It was pretty funny to see Talia's reaction when I told her what we were going to do (but I don't want to paint it, I want to eat it!)

Katrina had her own fun while I was looking through my camera, at Talia...

Shaving Cream Fun!

Today we tried playing with shaving cream! I even enjoyed it- come on, it feels cool! ;)

Here's what we did:

We did this in our little plastic tub, to keep the mess contained.

This is a good opportunity to talk about mixing colours, too.

Things we'll change next time:

I think we'll do it without the tinfoil, but maybe make a design on a piece of tinfoil at the end (apparently, it dries on it nicely... we're still waiting for ours to dry :) The reason I wouldn't use the foil again is that the cream totally sticks to it, so the foil was lifting up all the time, with her hands when she lifted them up.

Another change I would make is not to leave the food colouring on top of the cream when she got to dig in (now her hands are dyed ;)

Bubble Wrapping Paper

The second way that we made wrapping paper was a lot of fun! It's a neat effect, and it's pretty easy to do with what you have on hand at home. (And what preschooler doesn't love blowing bubbles with a straw???!)


What You'll Need:

- shallow dish
- cup of water
- food colouring
- tsp. of dishsoap
- straw
- white paper

What To Do:

pour water, colouring, and soap into dish. Stir.

Blow bubbles with straw until they come above top of dish.

Touch paper to bubbles, repeat until paper is covered.

Let bubbles pop & let paper dry.

Voila!