Sticky kids are never stuck for fun ideas
Poppy Cortese-Wilson at Icky Sticky Kids
THEY’RE icky, they’re sticky... and they just don’t care!
Life gets messy in Hebden Bridge on Tuesday mornings for a gaggle of imaginative youngsters - but it’s all good clean fun.
It’s all down to the efforts of two mums who decided to step into the breach when a much-loved local children’s club closed down.
Just a few weeks later their brainchild, Icky Sticky Kids, which now runs every Tuesday morning at Holme Street Arts Centre, is one of the town’s most popular parent-and-child events, say Nichola Cortese and Dawn Hinton-Smith.
And it’s popular for a very good reason, say the mums. It allows pre-school kids to get as icky, and indeed sticky, as they like, and somebody else cleans up after them.
Highlights include the baked bean bath, spaghetti junction and the jelly jamboree. None of these gooey goodies, which are many youngsters’ tea-time favourites, are merely for eating and instead end up as artists’ materials as the kiddies get creative.
Hebden mums Nichola and Dawn came up with the idea of Icky Sticky Kids when the popular weekly Messy Play at the Children’s Centre closed down.
Their own children loved painting their hands, throwing flour around and genuinely having a messy time, while Nichola and Dawn appreciated leaving the cleaning up to somebody else.
So when Messy Play finished, Nichola and Dawn decided to hire a space, invest in some equipment and let the town’s under fives get down and dirty once more while allowing their creative juices to flow alongside the baked bean juice.
They have been surprised by its success. “We knew the Messy Play was popular and our kids loved it,” Nichola said. “So we knew there was a need for something similar in the town. We try to go that extra mile, changing the ‘icky sticky’ materials regularly and making sure there’s always something different to do.
“It can be anything from blue spaghetti and rice pudding to custard and cornflakes. We have a tent full of hay one week or shredded paper the next. We have a large section of floor covered in paper so the kids can let rip with paint as well as tables for play dough, glueing and sticking, a sandpit and water table.
“One week we had a very enthusiastic cupcake decorating session! All the parents and carers who come love it. Their kids get something genuinely different, and lots of fun, something they wouldn’t get to do at home because of the mess, and they don’t have to clean it up.”
There is one downside to Icky Sticky Kids, she adds. “Now we have to do the cleaning! It’s worth it though. The kids have so much fun, and there’s nothing else like it locally.”
l Icky Sticky Kids runs every Tuesday morning from 10am till 11.30am. For details call in and watch the fun!
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Friday 24 May 2013
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