Making a mess

Kids got messy Tuesday at RCA Community Park as they experimented with different types of art media at “Messy Mania” organized by the City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department.

Children ages 1-8 participated in this event with delight as they squished, splattered and flung glue, glitter and paint around outside.

“I love watching kids have fun and do things they don’t get to do very often, and I am very excited.” said Lynsie Haag, Bloomington Parks and Recreation’s “Messy
Mania” organizer.

Three blue canopy tents were set up by Bloomington Parks and Recreation to facilitate the various activities for kids to enjoy.

“We started coming to this event when my daughter was 2 years old,” Stacy Burce said. “The only difference this year is they changed the location.”

Last year the location was at Reverend Butler Park, but was moved this year to coordinate with the grand opening of the RCA Community Park playground, Haag said.
Various activities were organized for the kids to explore 9 a.m to noon. The first activity was cape making.

A wide range of art media were provided at this station including glitter, glue, stickers, markers and fuzzy balls the kids could line their capes with.

Erin Baer said her 18-month-old son, Kai, was looking forward to the festivities.

“He was so excited this morning,” Baer said. “He kept chanting ‘kids, kids, kids.’ Now that we are here, he seems excited to watch other kids and draw whatever he wants on his cape.”

The next activity involved ‘moon sand,’ a substance similar to Play-Doh.

“It’s not as thick as Play-Doh,” Haag said. “They call it moon sand because it’s mushy so it’s messy.”

This out-of-this-world version of Play-Doh, made entirely from household products such as flour and baby oil with a small amount of watercolor added, was a hit. Kids could take it home after they made their own.

The next two stations allowed kids to explore paint.

Combined with getting their faces painted, they could also create their own masterpieces by blow painting. This involved dropping a few colors of paint on a piece of paper and blowing it around with a straw.

The most popular station this year, as it had been in the past, was the shaving cream station. Being the messiest activity of the day seemed to inevitably make it the most popular.

Bloomington Parks and Recreation workers added watercolors to shaving cream and watched kids throw it around.

Thirteen-month-old Keen De Los Santo sat with his mother, Lura Forcum, and flung shaving cream all over them both. Forcum said, “I read about this online at the listing of city summer events and I thought it would be a fun thing for him to do.”

It was their first activity of the day.

“The other moms knew not to start with the messiest activity, but we decided to dive right in,” Forcum said.

The final station was bubble painting. A bubble solution was formulated consisting of water, soap and sugar with watercolor added in to create a rainbow effect. Kids blew bubbles onto sheets of paper hung across something that resembled a clothes line to create a colorful backdrop. 

One additional station was provided, but it wasn’t as fun as the others.

“We also have a clean-up station,” Haag said. “Soap, water and paper towels are available for kids and parents to clean up with.”

With the grand opening of the RCA Community Park taking place at the same time as “Messy Mania”, roughly 100 kids were expected to participate.