Busy childcare providers hear this all the time. Parents are often horrified to see their child just plain dirty. Child’s play is dirty, and if a child isn’t ready for a bath when he comes home from what should be playing, he’s been a bystander and not a doer.

A full day of kid play includes mess. Paper mache, paint, glue or clay are activities children love. Most kids love to get fully involved in “hands on” and that means “wipe ons” too. Art projects transcend the safety of a zip lock bag. If schools use aprons, you can bet they use them twice a year when they do art.

Any substantial childcare should include outdoor play through the day. One great activity causing parent cringe is the sand box. A sandbox can’t be fun if a child has to position himself from the outside. A respectable sandbox is a place where kids can build and climb and make inventing fun. It also produces dirty clothes, sand in shoes and engineers.

A great lunch is an “I can feed myself lunch” program that includes helping themselves to ketchup and dishing out their own fruit and vegetables. No matter how much the adult watches over a table, there are spills when young children help themselves because their arms are short and they can’t reach past their laps.

When lunch amounts to two of this and three of that all served on a plate the size of something from the family play station, it’s not lunch, it’s rations.

A good afternoon means spending time running, playing in the sand, having the freedom to tumble safely from the teeter-totter, sliding, jumping, climbing, and pushing cars and trucks through the dirt. It’s dirtier than napping or TV watching and it should be. Afternoons filled with doing can’t be accomplished from an unconscious position on a cot or chair.

Popsicles and ice cream don’t help clothes. Kids love Popsicles and ice cream, and they cheer the bowl of iced treats when they see them. Popsicles and ice cream are inexpensive ways to give kids a reward for just being alive.

By pick up time, kids should be exhausted and dirty. They’ve had a real day being kids and they nearly always want to return for another day just like it.

Kids need to play outdoors; kids need to play indoors; kids need to play. If childcare schedules offer children only a short few minutes to run, of course the kids will be clean, and the building will be clean as well. But by nature, children are outdoor creatures and that’s where everyone finds the dirt.

Programs that limit outside activities usually do because out of shape adults hate being outside. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter – duh.

On the other hand, teachers in good physical shape with active bodies love doing things, and going out doors to play and to move, just like the kids. These people bond with kids well because they are on the same wavelength; they have the same energy.

“Yes, he is dirty. He played outdoors three hours today, and he’s also exhausted.”

“But I can’t put him in my car.”

“We could have him delivered, or he could come home with me.”

Dirty clothes wash. So do children. God made children washable for a reason.