# messy play



## maizy (May 13, 2003)

What messy play do you do in your home with 2-5 year olds? Any websites that have good messy play ideas? Love to hear what you do.


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## Jmo780 (May 3, 2006)

We love to get cans of shaving cream, spray it all over the kitchen table and "draw" in it with our fingers. I have also used food coloring before in the shaving cream







My kids are 10, 7 & 5 and ALL 3 of them love this!

That is about as messy as it gets I think, lol


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## embers (Mar 24, 2006)

We do shaving cream in the shower/tub... but all over the place there! He can do it on toys, the shower wall, etc... and then has water guns to clean it up once finished drawing.

... can't go wrong with a sandbox!

My son has a wall in his room for this: We got several things of the cheap circle waterpaints (like that come in art kits or at a dollar store). I sit him down naked with a few cups of water, and he can finger paint on that wall! It adds color and spirit to the room, and the best part - it does not stain him or the wall! It washes off easily with water!!!


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## roomformore (Apr 28, 2006)

We put an old shower curtain on the kitchen floor to get messy. The boys strip down to their britches, I get out the finger paints and some paper, and we paint. We often get more paint on ourselves than on the paper, but it is such great fun! Often we won't even get out the brushes and sponges. We've been doing this for years now and it's still a favorite.


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## tnrsmom (Apr 8, 2002)

A friend of mine recently did a messy party for her dd's 4th b-day party. Everyone had a blast. She had poster paint with brushes (though these were not used for long) on the driveway (she ended up letting the kids paint her jeep and it is still that way a month later







), a pool with mud, a pool with water (though this did not take long to turn to mud as well), a sheet with a huge bag of flour and some bowl, sifters, etc... She had dough made up with bowls of sauce, cheese and toppings and the kids made their own pizzas for lunch and decorated their own cupcakes.

The only thing I would advise against would be the flour/water combo. My dd got her head wet and then dumped flour on top. She ended up with hair that was hard as a rock, kind of a paper mache helmet. It took a loooong time to get it all out.







:

It was such a great party, one of the best I have attended and I have been to tons of parties.


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## marieangela (Apr 15, 2003)

Just checking out some messy ideas on this thread. I've got a personal aversion to messes, but I feel like I ought to start letting my 3 1/2 year old do some messy play.


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## roomformore (Apr 28, 2006)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *tnrsmom*
The only thing I would advise against would be the flour/water combo. My dd got her head wet and then dumped flour on top. She ended up with hair that was hard as a rock, kind of a paper mache helmet. It took a loooong time to get it all out.







:

Oh my! I can't imagine having to get that out of her hair. You either must have the patience of a saint, or she got a buzz cut!


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## eminer (Jan 21, 2003)

They seem to get themselves messy spontaneously. Favorite activities include picking up handfuls of dusty dirt and dumping them on each other's clothes, splashing in dirty puddles, body painting, and applying nail polish (older one only -- I'd be scared to see what my 1yo could do with nail polish!).


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## OakBerry (May 24, 2005)

Lol at the paper mache helmet!









My ds loves smushing things around on the table with his hands, like pudding, ice cream etc. I let him because it's easy to wipe up. Plus he otherwise doesn't like getting his hands sticky or dirty.


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## sweetangelbrynlie (Jun 23, 2005)

homeade play doh. my son gets it EVERYWHERE!


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## JuniperMama (Sep 1, 2004)

Oooh homemade play-doh! Recipe???


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## sehbub (Mar 15, 2006)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *JuniperMama*
Oooh homemade play-doh! Recipe???










Here's a good one!

http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/pep/playdo.htm


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## maizy (May 13, 2003)

www.ooeygooey.com This is the link I was looking for and finally came across it. It has great messy play ideas!


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## shelley4 (Sep 10, 2003)

subbing to get more ideas for my dd's upcoming Messy Party


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## maizy (May 13, 2003)

We just did our messy party. The kids mixed water and corn starch. They mixed baby oil and flour. Painted my deck all different colors.
Played in the sand box which stuck to floury/oily bodies.
They hacked celery and added peanut butter and raisens then ate it. We called in ant salad....
Children were painted from head to toe. Shiney from the oil/flour combo.
I think the kiddos really had fun. After everyone left I hosed down, deck, child, self, etc. Very easy to clean up.


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## hubris (Mar 8, 2003)

We need to be more messy.









Does anybody but me have issues with feeling like some messy activities are wasteful? Not accusing other mothers of waste, it's just that I have a hard time pouring out a whole bag of rice for a kid to play in, or using shaving cream that way, etc. I would love ideas that don't involve using tons of food/cosmetic products.

One of our favorite messy things is to work in the garden together!


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## Sydnee (May 1, 2004)

We do flour and water messy play about once a month, granted, since I've had our 3rd child (she's 3 months) we haven't done it, but the kids loooove that!!


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## momto l&a (Jul 31, 2002)

We live in the country, enough said.

They constantly try my ability to get their clothes clean and stain free.


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## corhorvath (Sep 10, 2005)

What wonderful ideas!! A messy party--my daughter would be in Heaven!! My daughter is ALWAYS messy. Literally, I have to bathe her every night. She plays hard all day outside-but she with my parents while I work.







:

I know outside she:

does yardwork with my dad, but she thinks it's play
does gardening
has a sandbox on their deck.
When she gets home with me, we pick berries (while they're in season)
collect rocks
Inside we do a lot of:

painting and glueing with feathers, sticks, and other things.
she has a piggy bank and plays with her money. It's a different kind of messy-coins everywhere.
beads to make jewelry.
play-doh.
We have a "craft" room that we use to do most of our stuff in. She has a desk to work at but we generally do stuff on the floor with an old plastic tablecloth. I have sets of clothes that I don't mind if they get destroyed. We live in WA and don't have central heat so sometimes clothes are necessary, sometimes it's just her chonies.

We've never played with food but she generally makes a huge mess when she eats (ie, lays noodles across her face or like the other night instead of brushing her teeth, she toothbrushed her entire face) and I don't "correct" her, but it's her responsibility to clean it up when she's done or ask for help when the job's too big. I think we just generally have a messy-oriented home that gets picked up everyday/night.


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## mamababamba (Jan 26, 2005)

I love this thread! For a while we kept tempera paint, brushes, a squeegee and a squirt bottle in the bath tub...and then anytime the "cook" gets in the kitchen it gets interesting....I let ds use stale anything, flour and spices in his cooking endeavors.


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## corimom (Aug 14, 2006)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *funshine*
Does anybody but me have issues with feeling like some messy activities are wasteful?

I agree with you! I have such a hard time with this. I went thru a hard-core environmental kick awhile back and it has affected my reasoning at times.... I honestly think it gets in the way of my parenting







: . I need to force myself to find a balance.

Love the ideas - perhaps I will be wild some day and try one out!!!


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## QDB (Aug 14, 2003)

Playing with baking soda - i just pour it out on the kitchen counters and all of his work zone diggers, rollers, dump trucks and graders build new roads, get hit by giant snowstorms etc.

It is very messy and vexes my grandmother when she comes over and tries to clean.

I put rugs in the kitchen to try and counteract the footprints ...

we are almost always messy here...whether we mean to be or not


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## LaughingHyena (May 4, 2004)

Quote:

Does anybody but me have issues with feeling like some messy activities are wasteful?
I'm glad to know I'm not the only one







For me it's not somuch the food aspect as the throwing away. I'll happily make playdough but I'm not likely to give DD a pile of flour to play in since I know I'm just likely to end up vacuming it up afterwards. I might do rice or something like that on a tray so I can save it for playing again though.

Anyway things we do
Water, either in the bath, paddling pool or and underbed storage box on a few towels inside.
Painting outside with a big brush and pot of water, DD loves this.
Sand, or just digging in the garden.
Hiding objects in a box of shredded paper for DD to find. (make sure you check they are all out before recyling the paper though







)
lots of painting, fingerpainting etc. We just got some bath crayons but haven't tried them yet.


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## shelley4 (Sep 10, 2003)

here's a LINK to our messy party pictures.. it was alot of fun! we even had more ideas than we could use, so we picked just 4: Mud Pit, Body Painting, Goop (oatmeal, flour, water), and Tshirt Painting. we also had fun getting clean, with 'silly soap' and having a bath with friends.


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## bugmenot (May 29, 2005)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *sehbub*
Here's a good one!

http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/pep/playdo.htm


Dumb question - Would this be edible?
Play Dough Recipe 1

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 cups water
4 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup cream of tartar

cream of tartar is listed on that site as a "byproduct of wine making", so it might taste a little funky.. certainly, it's more edible than "official" play dough. We all know that kids will stick anything and everything in their mouths!


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## hypatia (Apr 29, 2002)

Just had to share -- I was inspired by this thread to let the kids at my son's 3rd birthday party play with vinegar and baking soda and cornstarch and water (which my sister calls ooblek). They had such a blast! The vinegar and baking soda were clearly the highlight of the party. I highly recommend it.


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## northwoods1995 (Nov 17, 2003)

We've made oobleck before and DS loved it!


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## wifty (Aug 16, 2006)

I know its unconventional, but I let DD paint the house. She gets a brush and a small cup of water and dips it in and paints things throughout the house that she finds. For the most part, a dab of water won't hurt anything and she knows what things are off limits (like the computer). She will tell me what color she is using to paint a particular item and actually will stand back and pretend to look at her art. 

We also occasionally play with toilet paper. She knows that the toilet paper in the bathroom has a purpose but she can occasionally unroll one that I give her. She loves making paths with it and will walk back and forth, carefully balancing, on her path or make her animals walk on it. 

I also let her use the tub crayons on the bathroom sink.....so my whole bathroom is a hodge-podge of colors.

But none of it does permanent damage, and it lets her have some extra freedom of creativity that I love getting to see. 

with smiles from a messy mama


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