This is an easy, creative play activity I put together for my mess-loving four year old. Whenever we do anything with paint or glue you can bet Miss K will be in there with her hands sticky and messy up to her elbows, and often her feet as well. See a perfect example here. In fact, she seems to enjoy the sensory component of our art and craft activities more than the activity itself, and usually gets completely side tracked from the finished product. For this reason I’m doing more messy play ideas with her when big sis goes to school, and she absolutely loved this one. She scooped, poured, played pretend games and created a spectacular mess by herself for a whole hour. The only reason she stopped playing was because we needed to go pick up her big sister from school. This is what happened…
Note: Originally I wanted this activity to be simple and kept the components on the table to a minimum, but miss K had other ideas.
To do this at home you will need:
• 1 Packet of dried soup mix or similar (eg dried beans, chickpeas, grains, or rice). We selected soup mix because my Mum was cleaning out her cupboard and throwing out an old pack that was out of date, so we preferred to use it as a play material rather than throw it away.
• 3 different sized mixing bowls
• Scoops and a measuring cup (whatever you have in your cupboard will do)
Miss K added her own touches on top of this as you will see, but first she played with the dried grains.
She scooped them into the different bowls and poured them back again. She grabbed hand fulls of grains and explored the texture.
…and then Tinkerbelle moved in!
Water was added. Tinkerbelle swam in the mix and loved it.
The wet, soggy grains were a completely new texture to experience and stuck to her hands.
Miss K marveled at the “mucky” water. It was swished and sloshed around, and used to make a cake for Tinkerbelle.
This is the aftermath! But to see my girl so happily engaged in her own imaginary world was completely worth the 15 minute clean up. Are you willing to brave the mess?
For lots more messy, creative, fun play ideas visit my Messy Fun board on Pinterest
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