The importance of messy play

Creative play is a huge contributor for children meeting their development milestones and messy play is just one of the areas that needs consideration. Messy play isn’t recognised as much as it should be which is a shame, a lot of early years professionals don’t consider messy play as a valuable experience but it is.

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Messy play can be used to develop all the areas of learning, these consist of:

When you do messy play with children it is useful to use a descriptive commentary to boost vocabulary; for example, “this gloop is slimy and gooey”. This gives the children a chance to learn new words that we wouldn’t normally use in day to day conversation. Messy play offers opportunities for children to speak and to listen; because messy play is in an informal context it gives children the confidence to speak out and communicate. This type of play provides meaningful opportunities for children to talk through and reflect on the activity. It helps them to modify their actions, negotiate plans and to take turns in the conversation. Being able to make marks with different kinds of materials leads them into understanding the symbolic nature of written language which is obviously beneficial; messy play also helps to develop the fine motor skills which are needed for writing which includes hand-eye coordination. Lastly, narrative skills that are necessary for storytelling will be developed as children start to tell stories when using different materials.

Messy play offers meaningful opportunities for counting, calculating space, shape and measuring; sharing out resources and responding to questions such as, ‘who has less/more?’ for example. Children learn about concepts of size, line, shape and area as they sort through objects and develop their interests in space and shape by playing with and making arrangements with different objects. Through messy play children can explore spatial concepts and use our everyday words to describe positioning. To help children understand patterns we can create patterns using a piece of play dough for example which gives opportunities for sequencing objects and events. Messy play can also be used to solve practical problems (yes, really) as children use language such as lighter and heavier to compare quantities and methods!

Obviously messy play helps with creative development (you all already knew that though); exploring imagination, materials, media and responding to experiences. Sensory development is a huge contributor when doing messy play; responding to what they hear, see, touch, smell and feel means that children can foster their own interests. We all know that children imitate behaviour from observing so it is important that adults also explore materials alongside the children. As the materials become familiar to the children they then begin to use them in play. So in short, children explore their own thoughts and feelings as well as looking at textures, colour, shape, and space in two or three dimensions.

Messy play helps develop self-esteem and self-confidence, not to mention emotional development including self-control and social development which includes making relationships. Children’s curiosity is built upon and positive approaches to new experiences are encouraged. Concentration and problem solving also come from messy play where they plan and see things through to completion (most of the time). By working with other children and adults it fosters respect for others. Messy play helps children with interacting, sharing, observation and understanding of codes and values of behaviour when working in a group. Opportunities to represent feelings, thoughts and experience through being creative that is why there are jobs like art therapists.

We know that messy play helps with physical development but just how much? We know it helps to develop fine motor control and their coordination by using and handling objects, tools and malleable materials. Children are also developing balance, poise and body control as well as coordination when using small and large movements (did you know that?).

Messy play yet again helping with exploration, investigation and making and designing skills. It can help foster children’s interests in the world around them and gives them the opportunity to investigate those interests. Messy play encourages children to set their own challenges, to solve problems and find out about cause and effect.

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So all in all, you can see that messy play is pretty important. Whether you do messy play at home or you take your children to groups it is important that they are exposed to messy play in order to develop all these areas of learning.

If you want some ideas for messy play then you can see my Messy Play Creative Dayblog post. I will be doing another big round up soon with lots more ideas.

I hope you found this information on messy play helpful!