Veronika is always eager to paint on new surfaces, and here was a safe and contained way to satisfy that urge.

Place a muffin tin, upside down, on a covered work surface. Then hand over paints and a paintbrush to your little one!

I showed Veronika that she could dip the brush in a paint color and then paint all over the upside-down muffin cups. She looked worried for a moment that this might get her in trouble, but seeing my smile, she was soon happily painting.

She loved making careful dots of gold paint. I demonstrated that she could smear the paint all over the cups, and then she briefly made bigger brushstrokes. She tested out other colors, but asked for the gold again, clearly a favorite.

Once there is enough paint, press a piece of thick paper on top of the muffin cups and smooth down.

You’ll get neat, circular prints as a result! We needed to repeat several times, of course.