Apologies for the terrible pun but we play with oats so much that it is getting hard to think of a different title for each post.   For our latest messy play session, I started off with the idea of creating a messy kitchen.  I wanted to keep it fairly simple but as always the children had other ideas!

I gave them some measuring jugs, spoons, scoops and funnels and Rabbit added a cake tin and cases and a lot of cardboard tubes. She started off by making cakes, which included pouring the oats down a tube.  Tiddler had fun experimenting with the funnels and discovered it was much easier to get the oats to go through the big one.

Monkey took the play in a totally different direction when he added two Lego Minifigures, the Dark Knight and the Conquistador, who had a battle over some gold in the oats.  After that he played with the last spare pack of rolling icing left over from the Birthday season, and of course he needed some flour to go with it.

While Monkey rolled and cut out lots of different shapes, Rabbit and Tiddler made some circles to put on their cakes.

Rabbit and Tiddler decorated their cakes with foam hearts and candles.

Owl experimented with the flour and discovered that if you pack it tightly enough into a plastic cup you can hold it upside down for ages.  I’m glad it worked!   And then he made castles with the flour.  Rabbit made a hedgehog using yellow icing and straws, and Monkey went back to playing with the minifigures.  The Conquistador defeated the Dark Knight convincingly by knocking him into a yoghurt pot and covering him with oats!

Then a lot of things happened at once.  Rabbit poured some oats through a funnel and down a tube, somebody (Owl?) made a Hello Kitty bow out of icing and Tiddler made a – thing – out of icing and flour.  And Owl and Monkey played together with the oats and the Lego minifigures.  There was some complex engineering going on with straws and wool but I’m not sure exactly what they did!

The thing acquired a flag, and Monkey did some tipping and pouring.

The Dark Knight emerged from the flour, and suddenly a lot of other minifigures got involved and there was a scene of devastation left at the end.  (Guess who cleared it up?!)