Messy Play

A few weekends ago, Mac and I went to an event at our local early childhood center called "Messy Play." If you know Mac at all (or any toddler, really), then you know that "messy" means fun.  However, "messy" to a mom, just means messy.  I'm all about fun, but not so thrilled about having the "messy" be in my house, so we were thrilled to get out and get messy somewhere else.  The "Messy Play" event consisted of about 10 different rooms at school set up with 10 different messy activities for the kids - anywhere from play-doh to water tables to painting.  

(the one picture out of a hundred that he's actually looking at the camera)

We hit the Play-Doh first.  Mac mainly just wanted to squeeze it in his hands, but we also rolled it out flat and made it into shapes.  He liked cutting it with the kid-friendly scissors and didn't try to eat much of it this time.  This kept his attention for about 4 minutes.  

Next we moved on to multiple water tables filled with rice, pasta or beans.  Lots of little shovels, cups for dumping, sand toys, etc.  He absolutely loved this and probably would have stayed right here the entire time, had I let him. This kid is obsessed with filling cups, dumping them out and shoveling. He's in desperate need of a sandbox.

I have a feeling he is going to love the beach, next time we go!

Once this area got really crowded (and he was getting pushed around by bigger kids), we left to check out some of the classrooms.  This one had some kind of gluey white goop that stretched and also pulled apart and broke.  The teacher said it was made from Elmer's glue and liquid (laundry-type) starch.  I thought it was pretty neat.  

Mac was less than interested. 

He was, however, very interested in painting.  We love to paint at our house.  We have this same little paint set and we paint all the time in the bathtub.  He loved mixing the colors (purple is his favorite), painting his fingers and dipping the paintbrush in the water.

He is quite the artist.  

But what fun is painting when you can splash?!  Giant water tables filled with dyed water, boats, nets, fish, toys, etc.  This was by far the "messiest" portion of the whole messy play day - not because of the activity, but because of Mac's love of water and "dumping" it.  He wanted to splash and dump and make bubbles in the water, much to the chagrin of the parents of the children he was drenching in the process.  I'd say he soaked 8-9 children before I got him out of there.  Sorry!  

We moved on to the room where they were making Fruit Loop bracelets.  Mac walked in and said "SNACKS!" and proceeded to eat handfuls of cereal out of other kids' bowls.  We ran into neighbors in this room and Mac had to give Molly and Mara hugs and kisses when he saw them.  Such a player.

We also tried painting with shaving cream, but he kept trying to eat it thinking it was whipped cream.  

Honestly, his absolute FAVORITE part of the whole thing was the kid-sized accessible sinks.  He loved that he could reach the sinks, reach the soap, turn on the water and play around in them.  He would rather play in the sinks in each classroom than do any of the planned activities.  Add a kid-size drinking fountain and he was in heaven. 

Have you ever been to one of these events?

What's your child's favorite "messy" activity?