Any ideas for messy trays? It's so cold here right now and in the occasion it thaws it's so muddy it's hard to get out. Looking for messy play ideas to spend half hour or so playing with. Points for easy clean up and easy prep but not necessary.

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Gallon ziplock bags filled with chia seeds, water, and food coloring. Don’t mix the food coloring, let babe. Tape the bags to the floor however you please and let babe use their hands to squish, move, and mix the colors. It’s a weird texture as the chia seed soak in water. I taped a bag to my daughters high chair tray so she was contained but I think multiple bags and colors would keep your babe busy longer.
You can take the broth of chickpeas (the liquid in the can) and froth it with an electric mixer. This makes a cool foam to play in that isn’t harmful if ingested as it’s edible. Hide easy to clean toys in it or give oversized spoons/forks/ladles/spatulas to play in it. 
You could do the blended up cheerios to make edible sand. Put beach type toys in it. This vacuums easily. 
You could do blue jello cooled with plastic fish and sharks in it. Babe can dig out the toys. You can do this at the same time as the cheerios to have a whole theme and multiple textures.
Kinetic sand is always a win. Vacuums easily. Put excavators and other construction toys with it. Also molds to make like sand castles and what not to form into shapes. If you can find or have and excavator that’s a decent size that they can actually work, this will entertain him for some time. 
You can do ziplock bags (thick ones to avoid rips) with paint squeezed in. Do like red and blue, yellow and red, blue and white, yellow and blue….do multiples and tape down. Get washable paints so if there’s a rip, water will get it off. Just squeeze the colors in and have babe smash to mix and make a new color. 
These are just some off the top of my head! Pinterest has many more I’m sure!

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Try yoghurt with different food color. My daughter loves it. But it is messy so I recommend doing it in older clothes or just diapers or in the shower :D

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My toddler loves messy bins. 
One of her favorites is a small box we poured dried beans into and gave her little scoops and mini bowls (little wooden ones from a Montessori sensory bin kit off Amazon). She just likes sifting through the beans and scooping/dumpling. 
We sometimes take little animal stickers and stick them on colorful construction paper, and then cut them out and burry them in the beans so she can dig around and see what animals she finds.

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Edible finger paint in the tub (yogurt and food colouring),
 bubble foam in the tub (bubble bath and water whipped to a foam with some food colouring),
 ice cube painting (or snow if you have it), 
Ooblek

Any ideas for messy trays? It's so cold here right now and in the occasion it thaws it's so muddy it's hard to get out. Looking for messy play ideas to spend half hour or so playing with. Points for easy clean up and easy prep but not necessary.

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