Most of the time our two toddlers just join in with whatever the other are doing or play with something from their boxes of activities.

They love to play with beans of various shapes and sizes, pasta and popcorn.

I prefer the larger beans as its easier to clean up and find the stray ones afterwards. Each child has a jar of beans or pasta, some pouring implements and some containers.

The littlest one goes in the plastic pool with her loot.

While 2 and 4 year old are at the table with baking trays to play on.

Pouring, sorting, piling up, counting, examining… lots of fun!

We believe that our children should learn to always work alongside us and take on their share of the responsibility. This may seem crazy at age one or two but the amazing thing is that it is my one & two year old that complain the most if I don’t involve them in what I am doing. If I am kneading bread dough they want to try, if I am juicing carrots – they want to do it too and they just love it!!

If we are making a smoothie they’ll drag the step along and climb up to join in – washing dishes, vacuuming, mowing the lawn – whatever it is we are doing, they wanna do it too! Its how they experience life and learn – and besides they are little mommy’s and daddy’s in training!

Anyway, so the messy activities are usually part of the general doing of the day .

The other day while I was cooking, Grace here was watching and I gave her a bowl of water and a straw and she had wonderful fun blowing bubbles and drinking in between!

There’s even a verse for it   – see the end of this post…

We love making Breadsticks from Se7en – they are very yummy! (ours are long and thin and we use spelt flour)

Making Breadsticks turned out to be a brilliant tactile activity!

After making the dough, I put out two plates – one with oil and one with toppings (oregano, herb salt and parmesan) and a bowl of flour.

I popped each bit of dough into the flour and our 1 year old had a fabulous time squishing each dough ball, rolling it in the oil and then in the toppings and I placed it on the baking tray.

And then smearing and preparing the toppings for further use!

More mixing, spreading…

and rolling.

All done!

Yum!

Kelly-Anne from Beautiful Girlhood has a Tot’s School Series. Her activities are always wonderfully messy and creative and some of them you have to be rather brave to attempt! Have a look at her wonderful ideas here… Thanks, Kelly-Anne for inspiring me!

“And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold [water] only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” Matthew 10 v 42