Do Different: Crazy Fun & Messy Activities For The Family!

Letting your little ones get messy is something that parents usually like to avoid at all costs! However, we’re here to promote it! Doing fun and messy activities with the kids is a great way of bonding and encouraging activity! Here are our four favourites to start you off!  

Yummy finger painting

Little ones like to put stuff in their mouths – especially the stuff they’re not supposed to! That’s one of the reasons why we think edible paint is a wonderful idea (the other reason is that it’s great fun!)

What you’ll need:

• Yoghurt (any kind: Greek, rice, soy, coconut milk – it’s up to you!)
• Food colouring
• Kool-Aid (optional)
• A big piece of paper (A1 works best)

How to do it:

Mix up the yoghurt with some food colouring and the optional Kool-Aid for taste, then put it into little cups. Then sit your little tot down on a large piece of paper with the DIY edible paint and let them find their inner artist! Allowing your child to play with edible paints is a great way for them to explore their creativity and their senses (including taste), learn about colour, and have loads of fun! Plus, you won’t have to worry about them getting harsh chemicals on their skin, or worse, in their mouth!

Salt castles

This salt castle activity produces incredible results that even Mum and Dad will be proud of! It is super easy, super colourful and super fun! (Plus, they make surprisingly good ornaments!)

What you’ll need:

• A mould (sandcastle buckets work best, but anything you like!)
• Table salt
• Water
• Watercolours (or food colouring, but watercolours work best)
• Pipettes
• Newspaper (or anything else to protect the table)

How to do it:

All you need to do is add 900 grams of salt and three teaspoons of water into a mixing bowl and mix it up! You need to mix with your little one until all of the salt looks wet and crumbly. (If you need any more water than this, add it in ¼ teaspoon amounts, or the mix won’t hold up after it’s been moulded.) When the mix is ready, help your little castle builder scoop the mixture into your mould, and then leave it for 24 hours.

After that, recall your sandcastle-making skills and flip the mould onto your protective paper, tap round all the edges and pull off the mould – you’ll be left with a salt castle! Then it’s up to your little one to use the pipette and watercolour (or food colouring) to paint! The colours spread through the salt, plus they look incredible when they’re done. Your little one will absolutely love getting creative by designing their own multi-coloured salt castle!

Polka dot slime blanket

This one sounds a lot messier than it is, we promise! However, because of the ingredients and the tendency for smaller ones to take it from their hands to their mouth, this is one for slightly older little ones!

What you’ll need:

• 150ml bottle of clear school glue
• Liquid starch
• Coloured woolly pom poms

How to do it:

Put your glue into a mixing bowl and add a tablespoon of starch at a time in between very thorough and very vigorous mixes! You’ll need to keep adding the starch until the glue isn’t sticking to the sides of the bowl. Once the mixture is ready, take it out of the bowl and knead it like you would do dough, and add your pom-poms into the mix. Then your polka dot slime blanket is ready for play.

Your little one will love playing around with this slimy, colourful mix: they can hold it up like a slimy blanket, break it up into small pom-pom slimeballs or simply move it around! It might sound simple, but your little one’s imagination will do the rest!

Kitchen science

Your little Einstein’s will absolutely love this “exploding” tube experiment! It’s colourful, it’s exciting and it’s messy: the magic three!

What you’ll need:

• A tall glass or beaker
• Baking soda
• Vinegar
• Soap
• Food colouring
• An experiment zone (we recommend a baking tray or the kitchen sink!)

How to do it:

Add a couple of tablespoons of baking soda to your glass or beaker. Then mix a good amount of vinegar with a little bit of soap and food colouring: the ratios aren’t too important for this and it’s also important for your little scientist to learn how the vinegar mix affects the scientific reaction! The pour the vinegar-soap-colouring mix into the beaker with the baking soda and watch fizz up and out of the beaker!

Your little one will be amazed watching the reaction and might inspire them to become a scientist one day, and if it doesn’t, at least it was great messy fun!

Getting fun and messy with the kids is a really great way for them to learn, for you to spend time with them, and for all of you to have loads of fun! Once you let go of the idea of a messy nightmare, you’ll realise that these activities are your little one’s (future) favourite thing to do!