After my post on Bean Scooping, a couple of you suggested I try something similar with water for Silas.
Silas loved the water (as did Kathrynne and Kaitlynn!) I just laid down a towel on our kitchen floor, gave him some measuring cups and spoons and various bowls and tubs.
I added a little dish soap to the water to make it bubbly and he had at it.
Yes, there were a few puddles on the kitchen floor after he was done, but it kept him quietly and cheerfully occupied for 15 minutes while I cleaned up the kitchen, so it was every bit worth a little mess.
What kinds of fun and frugal activities have you been doing at your house recently? I’d love to hear your ideas!
April says
okay….i tried this water scooping thing today when i was working in the kitchen. I gave my 23 month old son (also named Silas) some play cups and water….and after playing for about 1 min, he started slurping and drinking up the dirty water.;…..are you saying your son doesn’t eat any of the things you let him play with??
I already don’t allow our son to play with dried beans, and other uncooked ingredients because he tries to eat everything he’s not supposed to…(but ironically refuses to eat real food or the cooked version of the food)….,so i’m a little skeptical that you are able to give him all these things like flour/beans/spices without him stuffing his mouth with it
Melissa says
So Cute!
Here are some ways to do Math in the bathtub, similar to your ideas with Silas, but in the tub so water doesn’t get everywhere.
http://memorymakingmomma.blogspot.com/2011/03/bathtub-math.html
Angela says
I used to give my daughter water and those little glass rock/marble like things that you can put in the bottom of glass vases. She would wash and soak and scoop and dry them and start all over again. This actually used to keep her occupied for most of an hour. Maybe if you try the beans and the water together, you can get a little more time? Just a thought.
Kendra says
I have been doing this for years and I don’t think of the resulting puddle as a mess at all. When you use the same towel he was sitting on to wipe it up, then you have a clean floor! He doesn’t even realize he has helped you with the mopping!
I used to add bubbles with my older kids, but my 2.5 year sometimes drinks the water, so out went the bubbles. She still loves it!
FYI: We do cornmeal on cookie sheets to drive cars in. It vacuums up super quick and easy when you play on carpet!
Kristi says
How about “skating” in the house. We use cheap paper plates, one for each foot and pretend we are skating. This works best on carpet, but also works on hard surfaces too! My 5 and 8 year olds think this is great, especially when mom and dad join in. We also do a similar thing to the shaving cream, but we use whip topping or pudding- this way I don’t worry about them eating it or getting it in eyes.I love frugal fun!
Chelsea says
I do something similar with my preschool students. I fill two tubs with water and add blue food coloring to one and yellow to the other (or blue/red, red/yellow). The children get to learn about color mixing while they are enjoying the water. This is also a great lesson in volume and measuring.
Anitra says
To the moms who do this: do you change your kid’s clothes after doing inside water play? My 2.5-year-old loves to “wash dishes” with me, but even when she’s trying to be careful, we end up with water all over the floor, and her sleeves and tummy (at least) get soaking wet.
Angie says
I’d change her clothes if the house is chilly in the winter, but probably not in summer…..well, unless the a/c is up high. I guess it depends on how quickly you think she’ll be dry and how cold she’ll get.
Anna P. says
use the soapy water on the floor afterwards to mop with
Debbie says
I would just like to see a note put in to always stay with the child when water is involved. Drowning can happen in an inch of water unfortunately for a little one. A friend of ours lost a grandson last summer due to drowning in a swimming pool. Thank you for considering this.
renee says
my boys are now teens, but when they were young I would mop the kitchen floor, then give them big towels to stand on and move around, thus drying the floor. they thought that was the BOMB diggety in fun! now that they are 17 and 15, it’s near impossible to get any kind of help 🙂
Stephanie Mickael says
When I worked at a daycare, one of my favorite things, along with the childrens’ favorite was our sensory table. I see some on amazon for around $50. At the daycare, we would put different things in it each week, but my favorite was flour. Even as an adult, I would sit and play with flour in the sensory table. With a table, you can just put the lid on it when you are done, and then take it off when the children want to play again.
Heather @ CreativeFamilyMoments says
Bouncing bubbles!!! With a homemade bubble recipe and some knit gloves kids get to bounce bubbles. This has kept my kiddos and their friends busy for HOURS! It’s awesome!
Crystal says
I actually did this with my 11 month old son yesterday! I used a shallow plastic serving dish, spoons, jar lids and he loved it! I was able to make dinner with out him hugging my knee once!
Amy says
With all the snow this winter I was looking for some “new” toys and ended up taking my (16 month) daughter’s small round swimming pool and blew it up then went to cash and carry and got a 10 lb bag of rice for $6. We only put about half of the bag of rice in the pool so far with some old tuperware, teaspoons, cups, etc and she plays in there for at least an hour each day. There is very little rice spilled and when it does rice is so easy to vacumn up. So far we are going on 2 months of fun…
Alicia says
I moved my kids little kitchen set into the kitchen and what a difference it made. They loved “cooking” at the same time has me. This isn’t entirely frugal I realize as you need to have a kitchen set, but if you do I would recommend keeping it in the kitchen if you can.
I blogged about this some time ago….
http://themamareport.com/toys/rearranging-toys/
Amina says
Bean spooning and water pouring (with specific parameters) are also Montessori exercises for young children (ages 2-5 I think — I’m not trained in teaching Montessori, but my friend is). They help with building fine motor skills, which are developing at that age. Great activity 🙂
Zena says
I have 3 little boys, so the inside water play is TOTALLY OUT. I will give them mixing bowls with a cup of water and 1/2 cup of flour and some of my cooking/baking utensils and let them ‘cook’. They keep that clean.
Outside, i’ll fill up a bucket with dish soap and water, give them sponges and let them have a ‘carwash’ with their tricycles and scooter cars. That keeps them busy for HOURS.
Vanessa says
I found a craft kit in the dollar section at Rite Aid once that had small colored dowels about 2 – 3 inches long with foam shapes that had holes in them. The boys loved putting the shapes on the dowels and taking them off. The best part was that the kits were 50% off–just $.50 for hours of fun!
My boys also like to play with the foam shape stickers. We’ve made cards and pictures with them. These are a little pricey, but a family member found a huge bag of these at Goodwill for next to nothing and gave them to us since they new the boys liked to play with them.
We also had a great time making homemade ornaments this past Christmas with some cheap supplies that cost $1 or less: http://vanessasvalues.blogspot.com/2010/12/homemade-dough-ornaments-fun-christmas.html
Ella says
My boys love spray bottles, too. I give them a spray bottle and a rag and let them wash the walls/baseboards/kitchen cabinets/etc. They have fun and they help eliminate some of the messy fingerprints they leave the rest of the time.
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Brit @MomAnswersWithBrit.com says
I just love this! It makes me so excited to be able to do this with my son when he gets older! I love the frugal kid activity ideas, keep them coming!
It makes me laugh how you say it occupied him for 15 minutes. My son is only 13 months, but we think that having him occupied for 5 minutes is doing really good! 🙂
Christy says
This is kind of messy, but nothing a dust buster can’t handle: my 3 year old loves to dig in dirt, but of course we can’t do that in the winter. So I save up some coffee grounds and put them on several layers of newspaper on the floor, and let him use his trucks and shovels to play in the “indoor dirt”. He seriously plays for HOURS!
lisa says
what a great idea christy…i was thinking…i have some boxes…i could just put the coffee grinds in the box to keep it contained…well, hopefully contained when the kids play with it…then i can give them scoops, spoons, etc..and let them play with the coffee grinds. thanks for the great idea..will try this tomorrow.:)
Amy says
We also buy the dollar tree water bottles and they are a great hit to squirt into bowls and pans and even the kitchen sink (with rules to stay in the sink only). But they are lots more fun outside when it’s warm. My kids water flowers with me, spray bees, make mud holes to play in, spray the cars and so on. They LOVE water bottles. They are cheap fun. The ones at dollar tree, and I’m sure other places, have different colored nozzles so it is easy to determine which water bottle belongs to each person b/c they picked our their own color.
rachael says
Can’t figure out how to email a picture, so I’ll try and just write it out…we are STILL snowed in up here in MN so a few weeks ago I took the boys sled out on the deck and filled it with snow then pulled it in the house on the dining room floor…put towels around it…handed my 3 and 4 yr old boys mittens and all things necessary to play in the snow like a sand box. (i.e. little “bad guy” figurines, kitchen utensils, legos…) They had a ball and it did NOT make a huge mess. 🙂
B.J. says
I have tons of craft odds and ends from the dollar tree. I just let the kids make their own creations and they are entertained for at least 45 minutes! Most of the time it’s not a structured craft, but this gives them a chance to be creative. 🙂
Betsy says
We do the same thing with snow during the winter. It started when my 6 y/o was 2 and we had a newborn. She wanted so much to go out and play in the snow. So I brought it into her 🙂 Now they both love to play with snow inside. And it keeps them occupied for an hour or so.
Jan says
I put snow in the bathtub and let the kiddo play with mittens on!
Shannon says
If you combine cornstarch and water it will harden up when it is played with (like if you try to roll a ball) and when you stop playing it will liquify again! It was awesome!
joanne says
This is a great one. One time my neighbor watched my son when he was about 3 or so and she made this for him to play with. It is not very messy and a lot of fun!
Allison says
we call this oobleck!
Jacqueline says
When I was little, my mother had one cabinet that had the dishes that we were allowed to play with. I think there was a colander or two, a pot. Just some really basic stuff, that we couldn’t break. She even used the dishes when she cooked (although I don’t know if she would wash them first…). I might be careful about metal, though, since I suspect banging was a popular activity with the dishes.
carrie says
You moms are all so much nicer and more fun than me! I have instituted a total water play ban in the house, after too many instances of walking into the kitchen and slipping on a wet floor. The problem is that my kids would not just stay on the towels like Silas seems to be doing. The toddler would be running around the house, sloshing the water, the girls would be feeding it to the dolls in teacups, and the house would look like a flood had hit and the kids would all need a change of clothes.
We’ll just have to wait for nicer weather — or bathtime — to play with water.
Crystal says
You crack me up! 🙂
Melissa says
I was totally thinking the same thing! I could do this stuff with my two year old but I also have a VERY strong-willed 16 month old who would make a disaster of my entire house. They make their own “games” when I walk out of the room. He’ll push the chairs over to the counters, and demolish whatever is up there. I ran downstairs to start a load of laundry one day, came upstairs to them screaming and crying, only to realize he had pushed the chair over, emptired our entire brita filter (extra large capacity) of water + orange juice pitcher from the counter that I had been filling, and both of them were sliding and falling and crying all over the floor. It was comical….sort of. 🙂 I have a hard time even coloring with them, they love throwing things! The 2 year old is MUCH better and had grown out of it….until my very ornery, mischievious 1 year old came along. 😉 (And I’m also about 7 months pregnant, so bending over is getting trickier!) I am definitely not that sweet…..makes me feel a little guilty, though, because they would have fun! Maybe someday when I’m ambitious and I need to mop the floor anyway. 😉
catherine says
I completely sympathize with you! My children think that our downstairs sink is broken since the water doesn’t work. Too many times of finding “water play” going on when they were supposed to playing with their pretend kitchen stuff but they, “just needed a little water” :-). I just turned off the water at the sink (the knobs under the sink) and now I can let them play downstairs without worrying about a pending flood 🙂
Melissa says
Oh, that is a great idea, thanks Catherine! We are moving soon and I think our new house down the road will have a downstairs (our basement is unfinished now and I have the door closed off). But, this would totally be something they would do. Two mischievious boys think of things together that I don’t think they would think of separately! Thanks for the tip! 🙂
Jen says
I am with you, I think this is a super cute idea but I was thinking my daughter must be some kind of maniac because any time I let her play a game like this she makes an unimaginable mess!
Larena says
My boys love to “wash” my dishes for me. They pull up chairs to the sink and make a mess with the water.
Natalie says
What a little cutie! Children are so precious!
Susanna says
My girls love for me to fill a bowl with lots of ice and then give them other bowls of water and some scoops and they transfer the ice into the other bowls of water. They love to watch the ice melt and also like to let it melt in their hand. Spread out a big blanket or towel first though!
Nancy says
My kids loved to play in shaving cream. (just soap after all) but it is poofy and moundable. Also large empty boxes make excellent forts. For older girls take 4 1/2 gallon milk cartons cut out a long side and attach. Makes a doll house the can decorate. Home made play dough makes furniture and accessories. Also make homemade pretzel dough and let the kids make letters/numbers/whatever. Educational and tasty!
siobhan says
This is for older kids, but do the word game… You pick a word like APPLE and say I am thinking of a word that starts with A and ends with E, then they can guess/ask for hints. And this is especially good for spelling words 🙂
TeriLynne says
I used to do something similar for my now grown daughters- and still do for my 6 year old niece. I would fill a bowl with water and give her a paint brush. She “paints” everything on my patio. Of course this only works in the summer, but she will “paint” for a hour. She even “painted” my leg one day!!
Jeni says
I also do the beans with my 2 year old and he loves it. Another medium I use is oatmeal (dry of course). He can even eat a few and it’s all good! 🙂
Broke Girl says
Do you think you could send little Silas over to my house? My kitchen floor could use a good wash-down, and with Silas giving me a head start, it would look great in no time.
Tammy @ Skinny Mom's Kitchen says
We would do something similar with dried pasta. My kids loved it and would stay busy for a good amount of time.
Sarah Whitworth says
My grandmother always saved glass jars, among other things and would let us pour water into various jars. But she had us stand on a stool at the kitchen sink while she was working. Her addition was she put food coloring in the water and we got to mix and stir! We thought we were really cooking or inventing depending on which cousin was a part of the action. We had so many good memories just mixing and pouring colored water!
Another favorite activity at her house was to go outside with a paint brush and a bucket of water to ‘paint’ the house or the sidewalk–we loved having ‘grownup paint brushes’!! We would paint a long time with out hurting any thing or anyone!
Courtney says
I was just going to post about ‘painting’ with water, too! When my kids were little, they spent many hours “painting’ our deck and sidewalk 🙂
Kim says
My kids love this too. They “paint” the playset over and over and over again.
Sandy says
My brother used to paint the sidewalk with water also.
Christy says
We do something similar. I will crush up some sidewalk chalk and add water to it. Sometimes we have some extra small paint cans around that I will put it in with a paint brush, otherwise it just goes into a recycled plastic container. They have so much fun and since it is just chalk, the color disappears when it rains or I decide to hose it off.
Angie says
Another way to paint with water is with construction paper. Give him a paintbrush and little dish of water and let him “paint” on a piece of dark construction paper.
Jennifer says
Next time give him a turkey baster. Those are so much fun for little ones to use!
AkMom says
I put a shallow plastic box with about an inch of water and a squirt of soap on my son’s highchair tray after he’s eaten. Gets him and his highchair clean, gives me time to clean up!
JenK says
I love frugal fun! We’ve enjoyed lots of rice/bean/bead scooping, too. Here are some of the activities my girls have been enjoying lately:
*DIY Memory Match: We drink a ton of frozen orange juice, so I save the lids to it. I got a pack of stickers and put one on each lid, making sure that I had matching pairs. The kids can use this as a memory match game, or they can sort by type, color, etc. (Sorting is my three-year-old’s favorite activity, so this is how she likes to play with them.) We have farm animals, birds, fruits, and vegetables. We also have one set of uppercase and one set of lowercase letters to match up.
*Beaded Pipe Cleaners: I got this idea from a friend a few months ago. I cut a pipe cleaner in half and glued a pony bead onto one end. I put the pipe cleaners in a baggie with ten of each color bead. The girls have to sort through the colors and then thread the appropriate color bead onto teach pipe cleaner. They have really been into this one lately.
*Craft Puff Balls: Again, this is a sorting activity. I’ve slowly collected a bunch of craft puff balls when I’ve found sales or after-holiday clearance bags. They sort them by color and size, count them, serve them up as pretend food, whatever their little minds dream up. Yesterday, they put them on cookie sheets and bathed other toys in them. I can’t tell you how much mileage I’ve gotten out of my puff ball bag!
I can’t wait to see what everyone else is doing!
Robin says
I do something like this with my son, only I skip the bubbles, put in a tbsp or 2 of flour and give him a whisk. He loves it!
Bethany says
When my oldest was 2 I would do something similar to this only I would let him “wash the dishes”. I put some plastic bowls, ladles, funnels, etc in the kitchen sink with dish soap and a washcloth and let him have at it. I would even turn the facet on to a trickle and he LOVED it!! It would seriously keep him happy for close to an hour and my floor also got a good mop out of it 🙂
Joy says
My 2-year-old daughter LOVES to wash the dishes, and yet this never occurred to me. Huh. I’ll be doing this tonight while I’m cooking! 🙂
The Happy Housewife says
Cute idea! I use to bring an inflatable swimming pool in the kitchen to keep the kids occupied. I would be in the kitchen with them the whole time and I only filled it with about 2 inches of water.
They had a blast!
Toni
Liz says
I do this all the time with my 3 year old son while I’m making dinner. I just fill up one side of the sink, give him a stool to stand on, and let him splash and pour as much as he wants. I bet he would stand there playing in it for an hour if I let him! We do go through quite a bit of towels to clean up all the spills, but it’s worth it.
Bekah says
My 2 and 3 year old boys love to “wash dishes” for me! I like being able to clean or make dinner without them pulling me in different directions. I also give them toys to cook with in the bathtub – bowls, whisks, spoons, measuring cups, and funnels. They love it!
LifeAsAMomma says
I am glad you tried it! My kids as well as my daycare kids love them!
Also, instead of a sand box in the back yard (which can be unsanitary) I fill a shoe box sized clear plastic tote for each child (or a larger one for all the kids to share) and give the kids toys to play in the sand! I can store them away on a shelf when not being used and easlily get them out when we want to play with them! We even take our shoes off and put our feet in the sand and act like we are at the beach!
Jessica says
The boys most talked about (they request it several times a week!) is tying apples to our table – then they have to eat the apple without using their hands 🙂 Paul and I have played it with them a couple times and it’s embarrassingly fun and costs no more then apples and a piece of string!