No, you’re not seeing things! He, who hates messy play. He, who wouldn’t touch the fingerpaint or spaghetti paint, has busted out of his comfort zone, gotten paint on his hands and enjoyed it!
This wasn’t the plan, but of course I’m not complaining at all.
It all started with a humble sponge and a string bag from a bag of oranges.
I wrapped it tightly around the sponge with some string…
And we had mesh dab printing, ready to go!
Don’t stress, it’s an old plate…
Printing is a marvelous way for children to apply trial and error to their painting. They learn via cause and effect what will happen if they use something patterned such as a mesh-covered sponge to print onto paper.
It’s a nice, ‘safe’ way to get a child who doesn’t like mess on their hands to have a try at using paint. As Mr 4 has shown us, sometimes all it takes is the need to feel comfortable first, then it’s time to dive in. I think it also helped that his little sister was already using the paint for hand prints anyway, so he felt happy to try what she was doing.
How does your child feel about messy play? Do they love it, or does it bother them?
Today was much like a hot summer day in the middle of spring! We took our spray bottles out the back, hung a sheet over the fence and Missy 2 and Mr 4 sprayed the heck out of it. Last time we played with spray bottles, we did it flat on the ground on paper, but hanging a large sheet of paper or cloth allows the children to be more free with it.
Daisy, as always, was faithfully hanging around the kids, you can see by how muddy Missy 2 was, that Daisy was happy to see her! The poor thing got knocked over in the mud. Not to be deterred, her and Mr 4 got on with the important business of playing.
Mr 4 instigated lots of experimental play with these spray bottles. He believed that if he sprayed lots of colour onto flowers that he could make them grow faster…
He was deeply dissappointed that they didn’t grow before his eyes! So, he turned his attention to our irises (some of which were taller than him) and painted them blue.
…Now that’s what I call art!
Also, you’ve probably noticed by now Hear Mum Roar’s new look. I have the wonderfully talented Violet Le Beaux to thank for designing the new graphic art, so thank you!!
Missy 10 had some extra pocket money to spend as a result of her recent birthday. She bought herself an Eco Forensic Lab. (This isn’t a sponsored post, nor a review, I’m just really impressed with what she bought!)
This needed adult supervision, so her Dad helped her with this.
The kit provided her with protective gear, because some of the chemicals were dangerous! She was handling lime water, which went smokey, and calcium hydroxide powder. As you can see, this is very fiddly work! Great for those fine motor skills. Here she is cutting up litmus paper, and trying very hard not to touch it.
She had a ball, testing soil and water in our yard for richness, organic matter and now she has to wait a few days for it to dry out. After this, she’ll be analysing it for chemicals. She is devastated that she has to wait!
Other things she’ll be able to test for are mini beasts in our water and soil, humidity in our air, and so many more cool things. I must say, it’s leaving me feeling very dumb… But I can see that this is an excellent activity for school aged kids, and my fiance and Missy 10 were out in the studio for hours, having a ball, working together.
I would highly recommend this kit if you have a bored school-aged kid, especially if it were school holidays! Have your kids tried any fun kits lately that you’d recommend? My man is dying to get Missy 10 an electronics kit, but she’s not convinced it’d be any fun just yet.
Time for some messy play again! This time, I have mixed cooked spaghetti with fingerpaint for some squishy, slimey, squoozy fun.
(If you’d like a printout of the fingerpaint recipe, you can download it along with recipes for cooked and uncooked playdough.)
Spaghetti paint is great because it doesn’t cost much and uses ingredients most people usually have in their pantry. It is an excellent activity for sensory exploration. Children can enjoy the smell, the slimy feeling, talk about if it is warm or cold and how wet it is.
It encourages much social and language interaction between children and adults alike. Children can experiment with the paint by either handling it on its own or smearing it around on a piece of paper.
Don’t worry if the paper gets holes in it, always remember that children care about and need the process, not the product.
You can see in the photo above how a child could find out what the paint looks like if they lift the spaghetti off the paper – beautiful swirls!
Mr 4 isn’t a huge fan of messy play, but he liked watching this activity, which is a big improvement. Missy 2, however was willing to have a try. If only Missy 10 were home to really get up to her armpits in this mess. In fact, I think I’ll have to let her when she gets home from school.
(Note: if you are considering using this in a preschool or a daycare setting, please be sensitive to the fact that food play is offensive to some cultures. When in doubt, check first.)
What messy things have your children been up to lately?
Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.
- Ancient proverb
Following on from my recent post about initiative, I involved Mr 4 and Missy 2 in washing some clothes. I had lots of laundry to catch up on and hang out to dry. So I set up a plastic tub with warm water and Ecostore laundry powder (nice and gentle for little hands) and some laundry that had minimal soiling. Being a water activity, of course it’s important to always supervise young children.
Doing household chores together is a great learning opportunity for kids. They learnt/talked about:
- the different names of clothing: ‘what type of clothing is this?’ Eg, shirt, dress, undies, etc.
- the concept of people having a place in the family, and their own possessions: ‘who’s shirt is this?’
- colours: ‘what colour is this shirt?’
- cause and effect: ‘why is the water becoming so brown?’
- the sequence of events: first the children used soapy water, then scrubbed the clothing, then we rinsed with clear water, squeezed the excess liquid out and finally we hung them out to dry.
- how to play together. Missy 2 and Mr 4 had a few disagreements during this activity. This gave us a chance to talk about their feelings and listen to each other.
- sensory awareness: children can learn about concepts such as wet/dry, warm/cold, etc.
The children also got a huge amount of exercise for their little muscles! Picking up wet clothing can be heavy work…
It also puts their fine motor skills through their paces as they squeeze… squeeeze… squeeeeeeeeze! the water out of the clothes.
You can also let them help with pegging the clothes out to dry on a small, child-height clothesline. I didn’t, only because we had two puppies with very dirty feet hanging around! But at least this kept my kids busy whilst I hung out all the wet clothes.
What household chores do your children like to help with?
I was outside picking more lavender for drying, only to discover that the daisies growing next to the lavender were growing out of control. It seemed such a waste to just leave them there, so I picked lots of daisies and brought them inside to put in vases, and do some fun things with the kids.
Missy 10 was keen to try my idea of giving the daisies a coloured water ‘drink’. We recycled the water from the spray paint we made, as you can see in the photo above.
Missy 2 saw the goings-on, and wanted to imitate what we were doing. So, I found a disposable plastic cup from Missy 10′s birthday party and taped it to the table. I then gave her a glut of daisies to put into the cup, then take them out, then put them in. Much like posting. She was in heaven and this kept her busy for at least an hour.
She had a ball walking around with her bouquet and showing everybody in the house what she’d been doing.
Once the novelty of that wore off, I made some daisy chains for her to wear on her head. Weekend play at its best.
This is how Missy 10′s daisies look now:
If the colour gets any deeper, I’ll show how they turn out.
It’s been beautiful Spring weather here lately. Mr 4 and I ventured outside to pick loads of lavender that has popped out all over the place. We also set about untying and pulling the petals off the dried lavender that has been hanging all this time.
Mr 4 and I compared two very different flowers: a dried lavender flower, and a fresh one. We talked about the differences in colour, texture and smell. He had a ball hanging out in the old shop, having a nice old poke around.
First we sorted through our big wicker basket chock-ful of flowers. Mr 4 and I had to turn them all around so that each bud was facing the same way, then tie them in bunches and lastly, hang them up to dry. I told him about how the air circulates all through the leaves, petals and stems, helping to dry out the flowers so we can preserve them for later use.
It certainly kept him very busy! ‘This is hard work, Mum!’ he kept telling me.
But there was more to do… It was then time to un-tie the dried lavender that Missy 9 had helped me with, and crumble the petals away from the stalks to be stored.
You should have smelt that shop! Oh my…
We’ve also been having some adorable visitors that have been keeping the children amused…
Meet Little Frog. If you remember me telling you briefly about our flooding situation, then I don’t need to explain to you why the carpet has been ripped out and you’re staring at the concrete floor of our currently defunct playroom. It seems Little Frog has made himself right at home amid all the damp.
And have you met Big Toad?
This picture really doesn’t do this beautiful creature justice. Blame it on the neurotic woman behind the camera! This overblown toad was found outside whilst I was outside at the bins. I rushed inside to find a container and a cloth to put over the top.
Big Toad was much heavier than I anticipated, and lurched all around in this temporary home. I was not game to take more than a bird’s eye shot. But I will say this toad is much, much bigger than it looks in this photo. Its tummy was so chubby, it nearly didn’t fit into my container! We all enjoyed looking at its colourful stripes and it’s bubbly neck. Then, of course I let it go. I think it was a very pregnant girl frog…
I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many toads as I have since moving here. And certainly none so colourful! Does anyone know what type of toad it is?
We did this activity last weekend, and I’ve been too flat out to show you until now! I filled four water spray bottles with water and food colouring to make a pretty water colour for the kids.
We took it outside to spray on paper on the ground. This is even more fun if you can hang gigantic pieces of paper over the fence, but we didn’t want to get our front fence stained, and going out the back to do it on an old fence isn’t an option at the moment. Never mind.
Mr 4 and Missy 2 had a ball squirting away with their bottles. Here’s Missy 2 using both hands to squeeze the trigger and watching the mist shoot over the page. Spray painting is:
- cheap
- open-ended
- strengthening for the fine motor muscles (hands)
- requires eye-hand co-ordination as the child watches the direction of the spray and tries to manipulate it where they want it to go.
- great for teaching children about colours
- gives the child a chance to use trial and error
We tried spraying over ourselves:
Then we turned to nature:
And we learnt what happens when part of the page is covered then painted!
One day we’ll do this with the paper upright against the fence, and I’ll show how much fun that is, too. Are you all having a lovely weekend? I hope so!
Edited to add: we did this again later down the track with a sheet hung over the back gate.
Missy 9 made this beautiful butterfly. Playdough appeals to all ages.
Home playdough is special. There’s no denying it. Sure, it’s fun for kids to play with the store-bought stuff, but there’s nothing like the smell of freshly cooked playdough to bring back fond childhood memories. When I smell it, I remember our old Playgroup hall and I can hear the noisy feet of my peers echoing on the floorboards. I hear table legs screeching as mums drag them away from the walls and set them up for us to play happily at.
What I love about making playdough yourself is that you get so much more to play with than what you’d buy in a lousy, plastic playdough can. It’s also great that it costs next to nothing to make. Playdough brings many benefits to the child, apart from being messy, good fun.
Playdough helps children to:
- strengthen and develop fine motor skills (use of hands)
- engage in creative play
- play dramatically, as they make up stories about what they’re making. It’s common to hear children making up pretend voices of their creations’ characters.
- develop their cognitive skills. Children use trial and error, cause and effect and basic experimentation to manipulate the dough into what they want it to do. They learn to problem solve.
- further develop their language. Children love to talk about what they are doing with their sculptures, and this in turn allows them to socialise with other children or adults.
- experiment with different tools and learn about how they work.
- watch how colours change when they are mixed together
How to cook playdough
You will need:
4 cups of water
4 tablespoons of cooking oil
4 cups of plain flour
8 tablespoons of cream of tartar powder
2 cups of salt
Dump all the ingredients into a large saucepan or frypan. I like this gigantic non stick electric frypan, because it’s less likely to spill over. Before you turn the heat on, mix it well. It should look like this:
Turn the heat on to medium-low (my frypan heats up very rapidly, so I have to watch this. You don’t want it to burn or develop a crust along the bottom). It will start to thicken and look lumpy. This is normal.
Now, just stir constantly until it is a lovely, firm playdough consistency. Put it aside to cool before adding any goodies to it.
Once it’s cool, there’s so many things you can add to your playdough. Kool Aid can be used to colour it, or food colouring. You can even try beetroot or spinach juice if you and your kids are feeling experimental!
But don’t feel that you have to stop at colour. Sight is just one of our senses. Why not appeal to your child’s sense of touch, with some glitter shaken in, or some coloured rice? To colour the rice before adding it, shake some rice and food colouring together in a jar and spread it out to dry before adding it. It looks best if the playdough colour is a contrast to the colour of the rice. Below is red and yellow food colouring added to rice.
It looks pretty, but children enjoy the granular sensation, and they notice a difference when flattening it with a rolling pin, or cutting it with a knife or a cookie cutter. This in turn often leads to much discussion! Why not throw some hundreds and thousands in for a mighty crunch? Then the children can watch the colours blend.
And what of our sense of smell? I’ve already mentioned how pleasurable the smell of playdough can be for a child (or adult. Ahem), so play around with that, if you will. You could make coffee playdough, mint scented playdough, just look around your kitchen and garden to see what you have.
The batch in the picture below has been mixed with Kool Aid and coffee, to encourage the children to experiment with different smells. We have cherry flavour, grape, tamarindo, lime, and raspberry. This cooked playdough recipe makes a large amount, so it’s excellent if you want a large variety of playdough types, or have a lot of kids using it either at home, playgroup or daycare.
Uncooked playdough
Sometimes, you might just want playdough quickly, and couldn’t be bothered cooking it, waiting for it to cool, yadda yadda, yadda… Or your kids might be keen to help you make it. Or, you might be at Playgroup and want to quickly make some for the kids, and not have time to cool it down before using it. My uncooked playdough recipe is handy for those times.
You will need:
3 cups of plain flour
1/3 cup of salt
1 and 1/4 cups of water
Plain flour for dusting
Colouring of your choice
Mix the first three ingredients together with your hands. Then turn it out onto a bench dusted with flour, and knead it until you are happy with its consistency. It should be just like bread dough.
Separate into the desired amount you’d like for each colour, then knead the food colouring through. Or you can use some of the suggestions mentioned in the cooked playdough recipe.
One thing that’s lovely about uncooked playdough, is that if children make it, they can give it to friends or family as a nice little homemade gift. We kneaded a little glitter through part of the batch for a little extra sparkle.
Fun ways to play with it.
The ideas here are endless, but I’m going to give you some good ones to get you all fired up.
- using bare hands only.
- rolled into ‘sausages’ and children encouraged to cut it into pieces with scissors. This is an excellent way to familiarise children with scissor use and strengthen their little muscles in preparation. It’s also much easier to cut playdough with scissors than paper when a child is starting to learn.
- provide an old garlic press and let the kids watch the playdough squish out like spaghetti. Again, this is great for fine motor strength.
- raid your useful box for straws, lids, cupcake cases etc for your children to add to their play.
- give your children rolling pins and cookie cutters to play with. We’ve not unpacked our rolling pin since the move yet, so I improvised and gave the kids this empty tissue cylinder.
Make sure to store your playdough in some cling wrap or a sealed plastic container. It’s great to encourage the kids to help pack up, too!
Mr 4′s caterpillar. He became deeply engrossed in this activity.
Now, to make life a little bit easier for anyone who likes to make their own playdough or fingerpaint, not only can you find the recipes at Hear Mum Roar, you can also download them in a handy printable format to keep in the kitchen. Click here to download.
I’d love to hear what your kids like to do with their playdough.
Edited to add: Here’s where Aussies can source Kool Aid (not sponsored links, just adding on request):
I hope everyone’s had a relaxing weekend. I’ve been trying to soak a lot of water out of the carpet after our flooding. It should be dry soon, fingers crossed!
The kids have been having fun since they discovered we have grown two huge mushrooms! After we started with this kit, I found out that winter isn’t mushroom season. Apparently, every other season is. So normally, we’d expect to get more mushies than this amount, but it was still exciting for the kids, and these were so large, it really bulked up tonight’s dinner. But more on that later…
Missy 9 and Mr 4 enjoyed picking their home grown mushrooms all by themselves.
They gave our mushroom farm another misting of water, which they love to do.
Missy 9 and Missy 2 wanted to help cut the mushrooms up for tonight’s dinner, which is spaghetti bolognaise. I gave them a blunt knife each, and this kept them busy for a long time.
Missy 9 also had fun mincing the garlic to go with it.
Missy 9 watched the mushrooms and garlic saute in the pan, and we talked about all the B vitamins that mushies provide, what sauteing is, and she swooned at the smell of it! She’s really showing an interest in being involved with the cooking lately, and learning as much as she can.
It’s been such a lovely, relaxing, slow Sunday, and I think what better way for the kids to while away the hours than to pick fresh, home grown produce and prepare it for dinner?
Here’s my confession, though: my two older kids don’t like eating mushrooms very much. But they will eat it chopped up finely into a spaghetti bolognaise or beef stroganoff or similar. And they especially love trying it when they’ve helped to grow it. Look at this pic and tell me if you can even notice two gigantic mushrooms chopped through it.
