The boys love the idea of playing in the mud, but not so much the reality of it sticking to their hands. And clothes. And shoes. I found a recipe for mud dough and whipped it up for the boys. Super easy. They LOVED it:

Tyson immediately ran and grabbed a few of his construction trucks:

Jake grabbed his:

We’ve had about TEN days of rain IN A ROW. TORTURE for this outdoor-loving Mama. Everyday this week, we’ve had down pouring-can’t-play-outside rain and poor Jake goes to the sliding doors…”Outside Mama? Bubbles? Swing?”

Today, out of sheer desperation, I broke out our hidden art supplies. Many of which the boys haven’t seen before:

I decided to try something they both loved at school. We would paint with Matchbox cars, animals, and rubber balls. Dip item in paint…roll around in box. I had each of them find two or three cars and taped the paper down:

We tried big stamp pads first. Ty had fun but the cars didn’t really pick up enough ink to make the prints stand out:

Second batch of dyed pasta. So much more color. Finally got it down. Take one Tupperware of colored pasta:

Six gold bells:
Hide the bells in the pasta. Have kiddo search using tongs. Tyson enjoyed for a good thirty minutes (aka an ETERNITY in toddler time):

I came across a Mommy Activity blog that mentioned dying pasta for color sorting and crafty endeavors so I gave it a go today. Ty LOVED it though my first batch of pasta was a dud. I didn’t leave the pasta soaking long enough and made too big of a batch. I figure we’ll use this pasta for future craft projects:

Tyson didn’t seem to mind the dud batch. I gave him cups and tongs for sorting along with two big bowls and a cupcake pan. He played with this off and on all day:
I will be making a trip over to the local teacher resource store to pick up a smaller set of tongs for him but he enjoyed trying to work the big ones (though difficult with the small pasta):