Entertaining kids can be tough sometimes. What should you do if you find yourself in charge of entertaining dozens of kids at some type of social gathering for a church activity, a company picnic, an elementary school field day, or a kids birthday party? Well there might be several ideas out there that could work but one activity that is relatively inexpensive, fairly simple to execute, and a hit with kids of all ages is kids face painting.

Have you ever met a kid that doesn’t want to get their face painted? I know I haven’t. We are all born with the desire to have a cool design painted right on our face. Okay…enough of the small talk.

Some of you may be asking, “what if I have never painted kids faces before?” That is a fair question that I will answer by saying, “It does not matter!”

My wife and I were asked to be in charge of a face painting booth at a summer church social. Up until that point neither of us had had the privilege of painting childrens’ faces before. It was a blast.

Did we paint every design requested perfectly? No. In some cases, not even close. Did all the kids love their face painting? Yes. Well…all except for the one little girl that asked for a bird and didn’t appreciate that it looked like a hieroglyphic! Needless to say we washed it off and painted a frog which I was getting really good at. Many kids got back in line to get a second or third design painted on another part of their face.

You don’t need to be a great artist to pull off a successful face painting session either. My wife and I just winged it and did just fine. I’m sure that if you took half an hour before hand to practice a few basic designs that you will find that you will not have any problems at all putting a smile on those kids’ faces.

You can find basic designs all over the internet or even in a child’s coloring book. If you are really nervous just stick to simple designs like: the sun wearing sunglasses, or a ladybug, or a rainbow, or a lightning bolt. Pretty soon you will feel confident in asking the children what they want painted on their face. When that happens, you will surprise yourself by your creative abilities.

If I can do it, then I am confident that you can. So get to it!

VanillaJoy.com is a blog that talks a lot about family fun ideas. Kids face painting is a great family activity. Come and read more about my experience with kids face painting.