Messy play is all about learning through experience and it can take many different forms, from finger painting to exploring natural materials, like sand, water, mud, and clay. Messy play is beneficial for children as it offers them an opportunity to develop their learning across different areas and engage their senses.
The terms sensory and messy play are often used interchangeably. Using their senses during play, allows children to make sense of their surroundings and their bodies, discovering new smells, colours, and textures, and sensations.
Children naturally use their senses to explore their environment. While the five senses – taste, smell, sight, sound and touch – are well known, there are also internal senses such as balance, position, and movement. Messy play activities differ from other types of play as the emphasis on the senses amplifies the activity. Messy play also supports scientific thinking, which involves enquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching, and investigating.
At Kids Planet, we provide an environment full of opportunities that stimulate curiosity and challenge thinking. We encourage parents to dress their children in comfortable clothes to come to nursery that you don’t mind getting messy!
Beth Murray, a practitioner at Kids Planet Frodsham, said: “Our top tip is using lots of nature resources that are available freely to us all year round and not worrying about the mess as it can be cleaned up. Just sit back and enjoy the excitement of your child’s imagination.”
So how does Messy Play support Children’s Learning?
When children engage in messy play, they use open-ended materials and come across situations which encourage problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making.
Messy play provides opportunities for children to experiment and explore. Children mix colours, observe cause and effect, and question what happens when different materials are combined. This hands-on approach helps to foster children’s curiosity, awe, and wonder.
Messy play for babies and children helps developing brains bridge nerve connections and assists children in learning differences and similarities. The use of sensory material creates hands-on self-directed play, encouraging discovery and development. This approach appeals to children who have different learning and thinking styles.
With messy play, children can increase their concentration and ability to problem-solve. They begin to select and use resources appropriately and often see a task through from start to finish. Early science experiments are found in messy play, such as cause and effect and changing solids to liquids.
Messy play activities often involve actions such as squeezing, pouring, and scooping. These activities promote the development of children’s hand and finger muscles and help them to practice hand-eye coordination.
Messy play helps children pick up objects, and allow textures and materials to be moulded and flow through their hands and fingers. This type of play helps develop fine-motor skills – those little movements and muscles in the hands used to hold and control a pencil and cutlery, thread a needle or tie shoelaces. For very young children and babies, the exploration of objects through touch can often end up with the item in question in their mouths! Plan for this and make sure the materials are edible.
Hand-eye coordination is when your child tracks the movements of their hands with their eyes, which is essential for reading and decoding. Spatial awareness is the ability of a child to understand where they are in relation to objects or where objects or structures are in relation to each other. Body control and balance is the ability to know where your body parts are in three-dimensional space.
Messy play provides lots of opportunities for children to develop their language skills. During messy play, children describe the experience, engage in conversation and storytelling. This language-rich environment helps children to expand their vocabulary, extend their communication skills, and nurtures creative expression.
Words such as “gooey, crispy, slimy and soft” can be used when your child explores their surroundings by touching different materials. You may hear a few “ickys and yucks” too! This is a good sign as they are starting to make decisions on how things feel. Some materials do genuinely feel “icky”.
Supporting your child’s language development, helping them understand how things feel and how to describe them is aided by adult prompts. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling are all ways children learn to think, feel, and compare their environment and the objects within it. Using multiple senses at the same time stimulates learning and language development.
Messy play experiences allow children to express themselves freely and builds on their independence. When children have the freedom to explore materials and engage in unstructured play, they develop a sense of ownership and pride in their creations. Messy play also offers opportunities for children to work together on their creations, sharing their thoughts and ideas.
When children play with a sibling or a friend, they will chatter along quite happily as they explore the messy materials and their senses are introducing new words into their vocabulary. An opportunity to play alongside or together is a valuable social experience for a child. Learning how to share the workspace, equipment, and experiences is an excellent skill to transfer into later life. Children learn to trust others and cooperate with kindness.
Messy play and creativity go together. When given opportunities to engage in messy apply experiences children create, transform, and invent things most adults could not dream of. Children will be able to use their imagination in order to create shapes, forms, and objects in an exploratory way.
Although they are mostly babbling at the 6–12-month mark, babies love messy play and sensory exploration. Just be sure to supervise and only use safe materials:
By age two, children are as curious as ever and they want to touch, smell, and experience the world around them. This is perfect for messy play:
Children between ages 2 and 3 are typically walking, talking, and full of curiosity. This is where you can really start to inspire their artistic side by adding more elements to their messy play experience.
Pre-school is the perfect time to broaden children’s messy play experience to develop their imagination, problem solving and critical thinking skills:
Because there’s no right or wrong way to engage in sensory-rich messy play, it’s particularly beneficial to children with special needs and those who enjoy a practical approach to learning.
When providing messy play opportunities, it is vital to remember the focus should be on the process rather than the end result. Through messy play children learn to express themselves in different ways without fear or judgement. This freedom nurtures self-discovery and fuels a lifelong love for art and curiosity.
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