Cleaning Up Messes: Sticky Hands for Kids

Today I am super excited to share one of my favorite clean up tricks with you. We love finding fun ways to clean and get the kids involved.

I create the best in a disaster. My husband isn't a big fan of this. When I start creating my kitchen is usually clean but then as I get inspired to try something new or we finish a project and move onto the next one... we are kind of like little tornandoes... and we leave a lot of little piles in our wake.

If you swing by the house on a creative day you might find little piles of sequins on the floor or the table covered in puffy paint and playdough or the floor covered in painters tape.

At the end of our creative time we always have a lot to clean up because I don't like to ruin my momentum and put things away as I go... we might just need them again.

When I used to teach elementary school we would often have clean up time at the end of the day, just like I do with my little kiddos.

I discovered a simple way to get kids excited about picking up the teeny tiny little things on the floor and table... I call it sticky hands!

All you need is a messy pile of something... hole punched circles, paper scraps, sequins, glitter, etc... AND some blue painter's tape.

Then you just wrap the painter's tape around your child's hand... sticky side out and secure it in place like a bracelet (on their hand).

Next you just tell them to use their sticky hands and pick up whatever they see. They want to try and completely cover their sticky hands (tape).

My little students loved to race and see who could pick up the most stuff, then give me their filled up sticky bracelet, grab more tape, and keep helping with clean up.

My kids thought their sparkly tape bracelets were super cool to sport around the house. Once they were done wearing them then it was easy for me to flick the sequins back into my sequin bag to reuse them. If I would've swept them up they would've gotten dirty on our floor with all of the dust I'd be sweeping up and I wouldn'tve wanted to sort through them.

If you pick up tiny pieces of paper or other little items you might just want to throw the bracelets away, but if you can easily reuse an item, this is a fun way to pick it up instead of sweeping or vacuuming.