Kids and Messy Play Ideas – Why It Is Important to Get Messy!
Many parents are put off by the idea of messy play. After all, it seems like a whole lot of trouble to clean up, do the washing, and then get the little ones clean! In modern times, messy play is often associated with unhygienic play. In the meantime, hygiene and soap manufacturers have taken advantage of this to exert huge pressure on parents to keep their children clean and away from germs at all times. This actually puts a lot of parents off, and they do not allow their children to play in mud or sand. But messy play should actually be encouraged, even if it does involve mud, clay, or sand.
Messy play ideas are a lot of fun and very constructive! It provides the ideal environment for a child to develop and learn about different substances. It teaches them about structure, texture, smell, taste, and end products. Being able to play messy games and experimenting with different media, ranging from paint, clay, wood, fabric to bricks, stones, and soil, provides them with the ideal ability to refine certain skills. Painting a stone, for instance, can be really messy yet satisfying.
Digging into clay on the side of a dam or stream and creating little sculptures can provide them with hours of fascination and creativity. They then also get to enjoy the satisfaction of an end product that they can proudly display on a mantelpiece or give to someone as a gift! One of the messier play ideas is to cook or to make baked goods. Kids are generally enthralled with icing, and helping them to whip up a batch of cupcakes will teach them about ingredients, quantities, mixtures, colours, heat, and how the ingredients interact with each other. In addition to this, they also get to create their own vividly coloured cupcake decorations.
All of these activities help to improve their gross motor skills. Icing a cupcake, for instance, takes a lot of patience and skill. In addition to this, if they work collectively in pairs or in a group, they learn to communicate better, to share duties, to allocate responsibilities, and to share the common goal while they explore their own senses! Imaginations are sparked and electrified, and this initiates a creative thinking process that we all need and crave as adults. It also teaches them problem-solving skills and how to correct certain discrepancies with their own solutions.
Messy play is very important for children – no matter what the age. Even grown-ups sometimes enjoy it. It is freedom in chaos. We should all try it a lot more often than we do!