Feast for the eyes

Wednesday 29th August 2018

Children are naturally active learners and can learn so much through play. Play allows them to explore, discover, negotiate, take risks, create meaning and solve problems, all important foundations for developing literacy, numeracy and social skills throughout a child’s early years. Messy and sensory play can be an especially valuable learning experience for children because it stimulates many senses at the same time. They can feel, see, smell and sometimes taste their messy creation, depending on the activity.

Messy play experiences like water play, mud play, jelly, slime, goo, foam and scented or edible play dough can all stimulate children’s senses while they develop their hand eye coordination and fine motor skills. There was no direction or end purpose in mind. Just the experience of squishing and squeezing, tasting and exploring using all of the senses.

Here we explored our sense of touch and sense of taste. We talked about all the wonderful describing words of how the jelly felt in our hands - squishy, sticky, slippery, slimey, sloppy and smooth. We joked about how it would feel to have a bath in a tub full of jelly. 

Our children spent most of their time pouring, tipping and scooping using the spoons and cups and their hands. We loved watching their reactions when tasting the flavours of the jelly. Sophie was surprised and then delighted and exclaimed “oooh TASTY!” Needless to say, quite a lot of eating then occurred. "It tastes like ice cream" Said Michael. "Lemon cake" Said Ava as she gobbled it. Thankfully we were doing this after meal time so that it didn’t interfere with their appetites.

With our jelly hands and jelly feet, we ended up running around the yard with the hose to clean up. We also hosed the jelly into the grass. It was a simple way to clean up with no mess.

There is much learning to be taken from such a simple activity. 

+ It encourages the children to manipulate and mould materials, building up their fine motor skills and coordination.

+ This type of play uses all five senses, but the sense of touch is often the most frequent. Children process information through their senses. They learn through exploring these.

+ Sensory play is process-driven, not product-oriented; it is the purest sense of exploratory learning

+ Self-esteem: sensory play offers children the opportunity for self-expression because there is no right answer and children feel safe to change or experiment with what they are doing.

+ Language development and learning new words.

We all like neat and tidy activities that are quick and easy to manage, and usually that have a specific end product in mind. But children need as many tactile, multi-sensory experiences as possible in order to learn about the world, and coupling these with play makes the perfect vehicle for learning. We encourage you all to not be afraid to let things get messy.

Roll up your sleeves and have some fun engaging in messy play with your children. What might look like a mess on the surface is giving your child a truly unique learning experience.