Sticky Saturday: Beaded Wire Wrapped Pebbles

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

I thought the boys would enjoy making these.
They didn't, but hey ho.

I painted the rocks for them. I know they would've loved painting them but then they would've got annoyed waiting for them to dry.

Threading the beads onto the wire turned out to be far too taxing for Bean. Ed wouldn't even join us at the table.

He did make a lovely face in the beads though!

Oh look! A smile! Ed joined us to play with a piece of wire.

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Sticky Saturday: Minecraft Masks

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

World book day was upon us but I was feeling too blue to bother, so I told the boys to sort their own costumes out. Of course they chose Minecraft characters, but since they have more Minecraft books than anything else, I figured they're totally book characters.

I helped them cut the masks out of cereal boxes and then left them to paint them. They did a fantastic job, don't you think? I particularly love Ed's 'warrior' creeper.

Bean's costume will be complete as soon as he fishes his black hoody out of his P.E. kit at school.

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Sticky Saturday: Minecraft Ore Pebble Painting

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

My apologies for the naked child. It's Saturday and he doesn't get dressed unless he absolutely has to. C'est la vie. I'm sure most of you understand. He also has chocolate on his face having eaten a chocolate spread sandwich for lunch. Not winning any awards today am I? *laughs and carries on with day as normal*

My boys love collecting pebbles everywhere they go and they love Minecraft so, I thought I'd combine the two and give them something they can play with away from screen time, because let's face it, when they're not attached to those screens, they're re-enacting what they'd be doing on them. Running round the house/school playground at pick up/anywhere 'mining', chopping down trees and fighting mobs is all quite normal, so I thought some 'ore' pebbles would be fun.

I mixed up some acrylic paint to get the right colours, added a bit of PVA to help it stick and left them to it. They sprinkled on some super fine glitter to give them an extra sparkle and they look gorgeous.

I may varnish them if I get a chance, I think they'd look amazing with that extra sheen.

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Sticky Saturday: Painting with wheels

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

This week saw the arrival of a new toy...well...a giant tray. Zander and I had already christened it with some rolling ball related fun but this is what I bought it for; really messy stuff.

Some splonges of paint and some wheelie vehciles...

Zander went straight for the paint splonges.

Then he decided to get in...

He had lots of fun smushing the paint colours together.

Then, knowing they were welcome to join in and knowing I had a bath ready for them for when they were done here...in they came. Zander promptly left, as he often does when they get a bit too wild for him and he watched on the sidelines until I plonked him in the bath.

Just so you know, don't use glitter paint and then expect to be able to wash their hair in the bath water...

On the plus side, I got these amazing prints from Zander's handiwork just before the bigger boys hopped in.

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Sticky Saturday: Bunched up Pens

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

This weeks messy play was really simple.

I taped up some pens and pencils, taped some wall paper to the tables and let the kids go for it. Some of the children weren't fussed, maybe they were hoping for a craftier craft, but a few of them stayed for ages scribbling away. I think it's nice just to give them absolute freedom.

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Sticky Saturday: Roman Shield

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

I think I'm totally cheating by sticking this on here. On Monday night, Ed suddenly announced he needed to make a Roman shield in time for school the next day. At first I was annoyed but then I was like, screw it, let's do it.

We googled shield designs, learnt about the 'Testudo' manoeuvre and he got on with drawing his design. I made the shield for him with some spare cardboard, making it curved. He wanted to make it full sized but sadly there wasn't enough cardboard.

He then lovingly painted it with lovely bright acrylics and we left it to dry overnight. Thankfully it was ready for the morning - yay!

I do apologise for the sad faced photo, he really isn't a morning person.

Do you know what though, having spent the evening together crafting, I haven't felt this close to him in ages. Painting together gave us time to chat, just the two of us, we don't normally have, especially these days with little Zander taking a lot of my attention. I really must make more time to have more one on one with the older two, it was really special.

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Sticky Saturday: Pasta Wreaths

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

This week we made pasta wreaths.
I can't tell you how much of a pain it was painting all that pasta; a whole packet, stirred in a bowl with a lot of green paint. I added a little cold water to get it moving into the gaps better and then painstakingly dried in all on multiple trays in the oven on a very low heat.
Then I cut the middles and the edges off at least 30 paper plates, punched holes in the tops and cut up some ribbon.
I just hope everyone's pasta stayed on once they were dry because mine took a fair amount of PVA before it would consider staying in place.

I loved the kids versions, there were ribbons everywhere :)

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Sticky Saturday: Squish Painting

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

I'll be honest, I've been struggling to organise messy play at our tots group lately. Life with a small human is incredibly demanding (as expected).
So I think, for now, I'll mostly be concentrating on sensory play with my little Zander for my Sticky Saturday posts.
I chose something nice and easy (and not so messy) for our first attempt.

Dead simple. I squirted some paint onto a piece of paper, popped it into a plastic sleeve and taped up the open end.

We tried this on the rug during some tummy time first, which mostly got eaten, so I tried it at the table. This attempt also got eaten. Even when I taped the whole thing to the table, he peeled it off and tried to eat it. On the plus side, all that squishing the whole thing in his hands meant the paint spread everywhere but I had envisaged him pushing the paint around, using his hands rather than his mouth and seeing the consequences of his actions. I tried to show him but he didn't seem to care.
Still, he loved the crinkly plastic and he had a lot of fun tried to fit a whole piece of A4 into his mouth so it wasn't a complete failure.

The finished article.

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Sticky Saturday: String Printing

Sticky Saturday: messy play fun with kids

Messy play at our little tots group hasn't been very messy lately as I've had my hands full with Zander but this week I enlisted extra help, so out came the paints!

Very simply, I cut up some string, shoved it in some paint (I went for an autumnal theme) and gave the kids some paper.

This is what we got;

Even Zander had a go, which was a bit of a risk since he'd had spaghetti for dinner the night before...

Zander & Sophie, the kind friend went on Zander duty so I could get messy.

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