Guest Post: Making Messes & Memories

Hi there!  My name is Bri and I blog at Googly Eyes & Glitter about cute crafties and the crazy adventures as a mama to my two sweet little girlies (age 2 & 4).  I'm so excited to get the opportunity to guest blog here at Naptime Crafters whilst Miss Amy takes some time with her new little bundle! 

With Summer right around the corner, I've been trying to collect supplies and ideas to have on hand for a whole slew of fun activities to entertain my kidlets now that the temps are rising.  Today I'm going to share 3 of my favorite toddler/preschool friendly activities with you.  These are all pretty quick, cheap and easy on the prep.  They are also, however, 3 of the messiest activities you can do with your kiddies.  But the freedom to be messy is just another awesome bonus of summertime: there's little that a good hosing off or a couple laps through the sprinkler can't clean up!

The supply list needed for all three of these activities:

Shallow plastic tote

Cornstarch

Food Colors

ChildSafe Paints

2-3 packages of Cheap Spaghetti

Large Cut of Paper (not pictured)

Paper Plates (not pictured)

1.  Cornstarch Goop

In a shallow plastic tote, mix cornstarch and water (add food color for pizazz!) until a fun goop is formed and let your littles have fun squishing around in it!  Once their all squished out, you can add more water and food color, give them a paint brush and let them go to work on your sidewalks!  

2.  Footprint Masterpiece

Prepare as many paper plates as you have colors with a thin layer of child safe paints.  Lay out a large piece of paper, pin down with rocks or something heavy at the corners to keep in place.  Then instruct (or better yet, model!) how to step in the paint and then walk across the paper!  *You don't have to stop at feet (in fact, I'd like to see you try!), they can try hand prints and even cut fruits and veggies (apples and the bottoms of celery bunches are my favorite!).  

3.  Rainbow Spaghetti Play

Did you know you can easily color your pasta simply by adding food color to the water you cook it in?  It was news to me, and now that I've seen how cute it is, I'll find myself hard-pressed to make boring ol' plain colored pasta again.  Prepare spaghetti in separate bunches, adding a generous blob of different colors to the water while cooking each time.  I used about two and a half packages of spaghetti to fill my tote and let them at it.  They especially enjoyed playing with their play pots and pans preparing food for Daddy & I.  

Hope you have heaps of fun making messes/memories this summer! I'd love for you to hop on over to my blog to check out more fun activities to do for and with your little ones!  Thanks so much to Amy for having me!  

Bri

 

Thanks for all the fun ideas!