Do you let your kids get messy? Does it drive you up the wall when they get paint on their clothes or all over their hands and faces? Or are you pretty laid back when it comes to mess? A lover or a hater, messy play and getting dirty is a part of childhood and their development. Activities like digging and playing in the mud, painting, or playing with materials such as play dough, clay ect. All good for them, and this is why;
PHYSICAL HEALTH
This one mostly refers to messy play that happens outside in the dirt. Scientists are finding more and more as time goes on that it’s good for children to play in the dirt. Children that get dirty have better immune systems and get sick less often. When children play outside, they’re often engaging with their whole bodies, which is great for their physical health and development. So let’s let the children build mud pies, climb trees, and roll in the grass. It’s good for their health!
MATHEMATICAL SKILLS
Messy activities, for one, help with spatial awareness.
It’s been found that children that have better spatial awareness are better at math. Messy play tends to be physically immersive, and so children are gaining an understanding of their bodies and where they fit in the world. It can also be very visually immersive at the same time, for example, finger painting. Being both physically and visually immersive combined gives the child a greater understanding of the physical world, leading to math skills.
Another way math skills are built through messy play is with sensory tools. Many sensory play activities for children include scooping tools. Something like a measuring cup and a large bowl, for example. While the child is digging in the sensory materials, they’re learning things like “it takes a lot of scoops to fill this bowl.” I know it seems simple, but the concept of large things (the full bowl) being made of many small parts (the scoops or measuring cups) is an important early math concept.
MOTOR SKILLS
Developing Gross and Fine motor skills is one of the most fun and varied skills to work on! Messy play lends itself well to working on both fine and gross motor skills. Activities such as running through and jumping into puddles, requires coordination of large muscle groups in the body, hence enhances gross motor skills. Where as digging with their hands in the dirt, finger painting, or playing with playdough enhances fine motor skills. So much messy play tends to be getting immersive with their hands.
LANGUAGE SKILLS
Messy, sensory and outdoor play have their own sets of vocabulary words. Slippery, slimey, grimey, dirty, rough, smooth, shiney, dull. Overflowing, spilling, falling, bright, colorful, edible, non-edible. The grown ups can help describe things and they can describe things to each other.It’s also really fun to see what kinds of words and phrases children come up with on their own when they don’t know the specific word to describe something. It;s great for their language development.
LEARNING ABOUT THEIR WORLD
Sometimes it’s easy to forget, but young children are still new to this world! Their brains and bodies are developing at a rapid pace every single day, but they are still developing. So much of the world is new to them, and it’s important for them to explore that. Adults are able to learn about the world through reading or watching documentaries. Children still need to experience and explore to learn about their world hands on.
Getting messy and immersed in their play allows them to truly experience and explore the simple things about their world. While something like finger painting may seem simple to us, it’s all new to them. The color, the texture, how the paint works, maybe even how it tastes. All of it is basically blowing their little minds.
EXPLORATION & CURIOSITY
Messy play for children is a very immersive activity. They can completely lose themselves in what they’re doing, explore and follow all of their curiosities. Exploration is important for children, in order for them to understand their worlds and themselves.
All of these curiosities are beneficial to their cognitive development. And being able to be curious and understand how to follow that curiosity is something that will serve them well throughout their academic lives and well into adulthood. Without curiosity, we wouldn’t have anyone inventing or creating much of anything.
Children are naturally very curious, let’s let them be.
SENSORIAL EXPERIENCE
Sensorial experiences are important for growing minds and bodies. They’re learning about textures, colors, tastes, smells, and sounds. As I reminded you earlier, young children are still new to this world. They’re still learning about many things we take for granted, and part of that is the sensory world.
SOCIAL SKILLS
Art, outdoor play, and sensory play can often be very social and communal. It requires communication with their peers, compromise and being adaptable to other children’s ways of playing. Sharing, coming up with their own stories and rules; this is all important for our children to practice being good friends.
CREATIVITY
Digging in the mud, finger painting, splashing in puddles and other messy play activities have no desirable end result. There is no right or wrong way of doing it, or an instruction manual. It’s completely open for children to be creative with it. Especially when they aren’t given any limitations.
Creativity has been shown to be important in building the brain connections in young children. 90% of our brains are developed before the age of 5 years-old! 80% before the age of 3! The foundational skills are so important!
MAKING MEMORIES
Messy play can set adults anxiety through the roof and some get frustrated with the mess. While yes, eventually children will be adults some day, do not forget that they are children now! There is something worthy in cherishing and protecting that and making fun memories in the process.
Loving this post Charlotte! I never thought about how this kind of play (although I do it a lot) helps mathematically! You’re so right! Also love seeing Molly covered in all the paint, really made me laugh!
Caitylis x x