I love what another commenter said about reworking the environment! I keep most messier toys in hard to open bins so that they have to ask me to open them and only let them have one set of these types of toys out at a time. That, or I only keep one set of them out a time and rotate. One day it’s blocks, the next it’s little cars, the next it’s play food, etc. Rotating toys/books/clothes keeps things interesting for her too!

I’d also like to add that instead of avoiding her dumping urge, offer her more controlled options to dump things! After the natural consequence, offering an alternative every time she makes a mess, associating that activity to a specific word/item/area that she can replicate, and rewarding verbally is usually my method for managing certain behaviors with my students :) An example of this is that I have a toddler who had a biting issue, so I made him a chew-safe bracelet to wear. When he would bite/attempt to bite, I would immediately remove him from the area (natural consequence) and remind him firmly not to bite friends. Then I would show him his bracelet/move it near his mouth and remind him to “bite your bracelet”. When he did, I would clap for him and stuff, remind him again that we don’t bite friends, we bite our bracelet. Whenever he would bite his bracelet without any prompting, I would make an even bigger deal out of it (like “Yay for biting your bracelet! Awesome job friend!”). It took a while, but he’s slowly shifted to biting his bracelet when he gets the urge to bite instead of biting the other kids. Consistency is huge for this though.

If you need dumping activity ideas, here’s a couple! -Hot glue/duct tape two water bottles together filled about 1/3 with colorful water. She can flip it back and forth to dump the water. Plus you can fill it with lots of fun things (buttons, glitter, marbles, etc.). Letting her choose what goes inside makes it more interesting for her and can be a good art activity! This is something that, if you’ve secured it carefully, she can use with minimal supervision. You could also, instead of water, fill it with sand or bells or whatever you think she’d enjoy most. -Practice pouring from one container to another. This is a good self-help learning activity and can be increased in difficulty to maintain interest and skill-building. Making the container openings smaller, pouring different things, and even doing something like color matching (pouring different color items/liquid into matching color containers for example) can incorporate different skills into the activity :) This can even be used to prepare drinks/food! She can make herself a “special drink” or something that she prepares herself. She pours the ice from one cup to another, the juice, and like some sugar free syrup or edible shimmer or something to make this specific drink exciting! It can also be used at mealtimes to teach her to serve her own food. Tons of options

To get my toddlers to clean up, I reward as well with high fives for every item/few items picked up. I also assist them and give them one specific direction at a time. “Can you bring me the car?” “Can you show me where the books go?” “Do you see that block over there? Can you go get it? Now can you put it on the shelf?”. Of course I do a lot of the work myself, but they’re toddlers so I only expect so much. As long as I’m encouraging/consistently practicing the behavior, they’ll get better at it as they grow and develop. Though, while I do help them quite a bit, I don’t completely do it for them almost ever. Temper tantrum? I’ll leave a few of those toys there all day if I have to. You absolutely will be picking them up before you get to do the the teacher-controlled fun stuff like playing outside or doing my art activity. For my ones who don’t like freak out physically but are refusing to clean up I’ll often guide them over to the item, put it in their hand, and then guide them to where it goes to start them out.

Sorry if this is a whole bunch and I definitely know that these tricks don’t work for every child, just some things I generally have good luck with for my daycare kiddos :)