How to paint with toothbrushes

Swap a paintbrush for an old toothbrush to make some wonderful scratchy and swirly paint marks and create some wonderful paintings.

You might choose to use just one colour of paint. Here we chose yellow and poured paint onto a shallow plate. Then we dipped in our old toothbrush and painted with it - making short scratchy marks on the paper.

Little ones might just want to enjoy making marks with their toothbrushes or mixing in different colours. Here though we decided to paint a picture of a dog (as the child thought the brush strokes looked like fur). We added details with a thin paintbrush at the end for the eyes, nose, smile and collar.

It is even more fun to squeeze out a mix of different coloured paints and mix them as you paint your picture.

Here we used swirly brush strokes to paint a picture of the sea and the mix of colours worked beautifully.

Once you have shown your children how to paint with a toothbrush they will come up with all sorts of ideas of their own.