Playdough

Yesterday Geoff's sister Emily made play dough with Ceci, Bailey and Adele while I was checking out a writing co-op with Tennie. They all measured, stirred and created the colors for their new creation. Someone took a picture of them using the play dough toys. Fun enough.

Later in the day Geoff was in charge while Emily and I were gone from the house for a couple hours. These same girls asked if they could make play dough again. They assured Geoff they remembered the recipe from making it that morning, so with the agreement that they would clean up the mess he went upstairs to study myocardial infarction in the quiet of the study.

Tennie came to Geoff to report that things were getting messy. Geoff calmed her and said they had promised to clean it up. When he went down a short time later to check in he discovered what three girls left to themselves in the kitchen could create...

By the time we got home the kitchen was clean as a whistle, but apparently the pictures here don't do the mess justice. Several boxes of food coloring were emptied, along with bottles of sprinkles and other cake decorations. It spread from the table to the floor and beyond. Adele kept saying, "This is so fun! This is so much fun!"


When Geoff showed me the pictures I looked at the nice and tidy picture taken in the morning (the adult-directed activity) compared to the afternoon pictures (child-directed activity) and realized that without knowing it I often set limits/parameters for them to function in, but their creativity and bounds are so much broader than mine. And they kept their word, they cleaned it up every whit. Lesson learned: get out of the way!