My kids love homemade anything. Don't we all? Homemade cookies, homemade toys, homemade playdough, homemade forts all make their list of favorites. For every mom, however, there is implicit meaning in the term homemade. Yep, any way you compute it . . . homemade + kids = mess.
I advocate for play everyday. I'm all for getting messy. As passionate as I am on the subject, I'm still "middle-of-the-road" when it comes to putting it into action. If you're a mom, you understand there are limits. Limits to how many times a day you clean up a mess. Limits to the hours devoted to particular projects. Limits to patience when the kids aren't playing nice. I'm not super-mom. We have small adventures everyday, but every part of every day isn't devoted to it.
I love Crayola art. It's washable. (No, this isn't a sponsored post). So when the kids begged for a painting project, I took them and 6 bottles of washable paint outside. We taped newspaper to the table with blue painter's tape. They each got brushes, cups of water, a palette of bright paint, and paper towels to dab their brushes.
And then I stepped away.
My 3-year-old had two paintings finished before my 7-year-old completed his first. Then I remembered a tip about searching for a rainbow of colors on nature walks from the Play Outdoors guest blog. We left him in peace to walk the front yard matching the colors in nature to our paper plate palate. Wow!
Footnote: As a mom, whenever I end up taking the time for a project like this - I find the experience much more memorable than the clean-up!
