Messy Fun Day!

Today was a whirlwind of water, rice, spaghetti and paint...


I had my continuum concept mothers group around for a day of intentionally messy fun! We often just plonk our kids down at each others places and let them make their own fun while we gas bag. Today was all about making sure there was enough activities to keep them happy all day long! And the best kind of fun is messy fun, right?

Raw spaghetti... crunch crunch crunch!

Bird seed with small toys hidden inside! One sausagey prince LOVED this one, he shovelled the seed into another container exclaiming, "I'm a pirate, searching for treasure!"

Shovelling rice
Rice is such sensory fun! Although I hear rice takes a lot of water to grow, so make sure you reuse the rice as long as possible! Surprisingly not much was spilt today!

Patio chalk drawing

Painting! We also had finger painting, homemade

Sink or float activity... rocks, coins, metal spoons for sinking and BPA free cups and Boon toys for floating! Butterfly loves doing this!

Swimming!

Playdough and drawing table! A combination of home made and eco clay

I made coloured icecubes... I was particularly proud of my layered ones! Harder than it looks!
I used Queens natural food colouring, although the fruit ones I made looked better anyway and tasted good!

Water for melting the coloured cubes

I also made ice cubes with pureed watermelon, and some with grapes in them! YUM! These were a hit :)

The ice cubes drew a crowd! I also made a huge layered ice block, where I froze some water with toys in it, and then added more water and toys etc until I had a solid ice cream container! I think this would be best done with coloured water, and plastic toys (I only had wood! :S) It was very experimental! Note: as you add more water it tends to melt the layer before it, so use ice cold water...


Sketti! I boiled up half a packet of spaghetti in the morning, and added cold water so that it was not too hot to handle (but still warm)... this one was surprisingly popular! They all ate the spaghetti and squished it :D

The kids really seemed to have fun! Different activities appealed to different kids, and fights over utensils were few and far between.

I had also planned on chopping a watermelon in half and letting them go nuts with teaspoons, but to be honest there was enough activities going around! One of my friends suggested giving them coloured water to mix together, which sounds great too! Butterfly would probably drink it, though!

If I have any advice to anyone thinking of trying this (and I think you should!) is that 6 toddlers is definitely enough! Also that it might be better to stick to wet fun or dry fun, we could have gotten away with just water activities (or just dry) I think. The rice and birdseed stayed dry, but cleanup was interesting! And don't think that just because you put a bunch of effort into outdoor activities that they don't all want to go inside, I could have been better prepared indoors!

All paints and playdough was homemade (save for some eco clay) and the bird seed and rice are being reused. The bird seed is for making bird feeders later on! Water was poured on gardens. Some spaghetti was used, but if you saw them enjoying it, it was totes worth it!

It sure was a messy day! But in reality, not as messy as you would expect of 6 toddlers! I say, give it a go... this is the stuff childhood memories are made of!