Activity Ideas

Disclaimer: This post is obviously not in my normal style; I wrote it a few years ago with the intention of publication in a magazine, so sorry for the weirdness but I think it has some good ideas so I wanted to include it without taking the time to rewrite it blog-style. Hope you enjoy it! : )

“I want to crack the eggs! I love getting gushy!”

This proclamation was no news to me. Since my mess-loving daughter was born, I’ve been compelled to make some compromises to my tidy sensibilities. It seemed every time I tried to quell her desire, she found an even less appealing form of expressing it. So in an effort to avoid the big messes, I forced myself to love the small ones.

Her yogurt moisturizer smeared expertly across every surface of her face and arms, her lovely sour cream designs finger-painted onto the dining table, bowls of chunky applesauce dumped with glee onto her precious head of curls. Thank goodness for the calming lavender bubble bath I discovered in her infancy – it even comes with its own bubble wand to aid in taking nice deep breaths as you scrub the sticky stuff.

We’ve made sure to screen all of her art supplies for washability so she can regularly redecorate her table and toys (family heirlooms are a no-no, a boundary she accepts in light of her otherwise nearly limitless freedom). Early on I attempted to thwart her efforts at fashion design, wanting to get the best resale value on her wardrobe, but I found that her younger friends were happy to be given her custom-made pieces, and it was hard to put a price on the sheer bliss she experienced in making her mark on the world.

My biggest fear of all, for a long time, was paint. I even enrolled my supposed-to-be homeschooled daughter in a co-op preschool so I didn’t have to let her paint at our house. I didn’t conciously realize it at the time I made the choice, but after a few months of successfully avoiding it, my motivation became clear. I decided I would have to get over it and learn to love even the “big” messes. Here’s how I did it:

Step one – Start small

Although her preschool class offered art three days a week, I started by just committing to one afternoon of gushy fun at home to get my feet wet. That seemed far less intimidating than dealing with it on a daily basis.

Step two – Contain it

A friend suggested a vinyl tablecloth to use under paintings; that way I could just wipe it clean, or even fold it up if I didn’t feel like taking care of it right away.

Endless piles of glue? Two great tricks I learned from my daughter’s teacher at the preschool co-op: practice making tiny dot patterns together so your child learns to put on small amounts of glue instead of squeezing entire tubes out at one sitting, or put a tiny bit in a dish and give her a paintbrush to spread it on. My other favorite tip from the preschool teacher: if your child is having trouble with wiping clean after using the bathroom, help her work on small motor skills. The same gripping and wiping motion necessary for effective toilet hygiene can be practiced by polishing mirrors, scrubbing tables, even using crayons and paintbrushes.

Step three – Expand your definition of mess

Water, I’ve found, is one of the ultimate thrills for preschoolers, and makes for a relatively simple recovery process. Following the wisdom of the first two steps, we started with summer water play – the obvious stuff like splashing in wading pools and pouring from one container to another. Soon I stopped discouraging the bathroom sink adventures my daughter is terribly fond of. From the moment she discovered the stopper, she’s been filling the basin, washing the soap, her toys, the sink itself (she’s very proud now of how sparkly she makes it). And much to my delight she hasn’t once overflowed it or washed something that would have been a pain to dry. In another kind twist of fate, she enjoys towling up her spills nearly as much as she loves making them. A warm tub of sudsy dishes is another of her favorite “clean” messes.

As she’s gotten older, my daughter has become far less intrigued by the gushy stuff. She’s more likely to be playing pretend, reading, or coloring with crayons at her easel (a necessary purchase, we decided, when she took an interest in coloring on walls – it was really just the vertical surface she was craving). How tragic that just as she gained the motor skills to control the mud and muck, she lost the drive for tactile exploration. Fortunately, next time she goes through a “getting her hands dirty” cycle, I’ll be prepared to accomodate her.