Does anyone have dry messy play ideas?

[Riddo]

I have a 3 year old mindee with severe excema, his fingers are often cracked and infected. He loves water play but it has a terrible effect on his skin.

So far I've provided a sandpit ( with dry sand), coloured rice/ pasta with kitchen utensils etc, a box of conkers - that sort of thing.

Most messy play ideas seem to involve water/ wet. I'd be grateful for any ideas

Some bag of pebbles and stones (long as clean) good for scooping and digger/cars or animal dinasaur play.

You can paint/mix shaving foam in plastic bags or between sheets of plastic do get the feel and squish and pattern making just not touching the skin.

Shredded paper is good for use with all sorts of toys.

Mixed cereals - Rice Krispies, Cheerios, cornflakes, shrddies etc
Different sized pom-poms and tweezers
Whole par-boiled root veg (potatoes, carrots, parsnips etc) with table knives for cutting and lots of pots and pans - use up old dried herbs for sprinkling on the top
Cooked spaghetti/noodles - I some times add in frozen peas and sweetcorn and trainer chopsticks
Have you tried moonsand - 8 parts strong flour to 1 part oil - mix together with fingers
If play doh is too salty and sore on his hands why not try making a pastry mix for rolling out and cutting into shapes,moulding.

Just popped in to steal some of those ideas. My kids love mud !!! Although that's water based too. Baking is always popular. Oil instead of water is great. Thanks for the ideas.

This week we have compost and straw. In the past we've had

Pom poms and sequins
Different size buttons
Shredded paper
Rice
Pasta
Shredded veg and veg peelings
Sawdust
Kinetic sand
Pebbles and shells
Leaves and twigs (more autumnal )

Have you seen the imagination tree play dough for people with eczema etc? I think it's basically cornflour with whatever emollient they use. It doesn't last very long (as no salt) but shouldn't irritate.

Flour mixed with baby oil (cloud dough)

Cornflour mixed with hair conditioner.

Lidl do instant lemon tea granules that smell great and are good for rubble in digger tray play as well as normal scooping pouring etc. I've also used leaf tea which you can mix with coloured rice pepper corns bay leafs etc. Makes a good mix to experiment with sieving as well as interesting smells. I only use dried rice and mix in food colouring so no chemicals and is still a good colour that once dried does not come off.
Chocolate play do where you add some cocoa powder in the flour. If salt is an issue reduce that and just use it for a day. the salt is a preservative.
mine like frozen peas to mash with sweetcorn and carrots or any other veg.
Shredded paper with hole punch pieces and glitter.
Ive found the sand recipe's good but wouldn't use them with sensitive skin as they do irritate you could try cornflour with any oil that he can tolerate almond, olive etc wont smell as nice but better than highly scented, or if he can use a hair conditioner use that,
I use laminated pouches with hair gel and add sequins or letters and plastic items or metallic for magnet play, and seal the edges with a tea towel or grease proof and an iron, you can do paint this way or if you can find a plain Ziploc bag, but many have white labels on.
scent bottles by putting scented cotton wool balls into plastic lidded bottles and drill holes in.
Make a light box...string led lights inside an opaque storage box.

Thank you for all the fantastic ideas. He enjoyed playing with sequins and Pom poms mixed in with the coloured rice but I hadn't thought of tweezers/chopsticks

The idea of putting paint or shaving foam in a bag is a great one. When he was a baby he enjoyed plastic bottles filled with half hair gel/ half water. One had cut up straws, one glitter and one sequins. I could use the same type of things in plastic bags.

He seems ok with bought play dough but the home made stuff dries his hands terribly. I will try the idea of mixing his emollient with cornflour, it should be ok when his fingers aren't actually cracked.

Thank you all so much