Blog

If there’s one thing we all know, it that kids LOVE to get messy.

You may not know much about messy play or have just heard about it. Here at Spotty Otter we are here to help you learn all the benefits of messy play and how messy play promotes brain development and teaches life skills in a fun way your kid will love. Messy Play encourages curiosity and lets your child explore their interests, use their senses, and develop many important skills.

What is messy play

Messy Play is a style of play in which children get to take the lead, explore, and learn with their hands, and experience a wide variety of textures and materials. It focuses on play-based learning and allows children to learn at their own speed.

Messy Play helps build fine motor control, problem-solving skills, early mathematical skills, science, language and vocabulary, social-emotional skills, and so much more!

Why messy play is important

Children learn best when they actively engage with their environment and use all their senses. Young children need to see and feel their world to understand it. By engaging in sensory play, they learn about a variety of textures and materials in a manner they understand best. Playing is learning for young children. Playing is their job!

Cognitive Development

Messy play and sensory play support your little one’s cognitive development - the ways they think, explore and figure things out. It offers your child a chance to figure things out for themselves! Every time they solve a problem, they reinforce that ability and build self-confidence. Messy play also offers a fun chance for kids to learn cause and effect through observation and hands-on experience. By exploring the physical materials, small children develop spatial awareness too.

Mathematical Skills

Messy play and sensory play also develop your little one's maths skills. Engaging hands-on activities offer opportunities to count and measure and demonstrates the real-life application of maths! Your kids will also identify and describe shapes, practice matching, and compare objects, all which are early steps in recognizing patterns and learning numbers.

Science Skills

To a child, some experiments look like magic! You can encourage that fascination while also building understanding of underlying and foundational science principles. Messy and sensory play engage your child’s scientific curiosity and development. Through play, your child will learn about physical properties, chemical reactions, experimentation, and how to make predictions and observe results - the core of the scientific method!

Social Development

Social development is the way children connect with others and learn to get along. When kids engage in messy play with others, they learn to work together to solve problems. They will communicate verbally and non-verbally to achieve their messy goal. They'll also learn to share tools and space. Messy play is fun for your kids, and it helps support your child’s social development too.

Responsibility

We all want our kids to grow up to be confident, independent, and responsible. Sensory and messy play support your child as they develop a sense of responsibility, which will help them feel more confident and secure. Involve your child in messy play setup and tidying up too.

Fine Motor Skills

Another messy play benefit is improving your child’s fine motor skills. There are plenty of interesting objects and tools for your child to grasp. Facilitate your child’s physical development, including hand-eye coordination, grasp strength and pinching and while they use the muscles in their wrists, hands, and fingers to squeeze, scoop, pour, and pick up objects. These fine motor skills are the start of being to grip a pencil and writing skills in the future.

Creativity

Inspire curiosity with messy play using open-ended art and craft materials. Messy play is explorative and spontaneous, there is no right way to play. Open ended play can support flexible thinking and independence!

Language Skills

Messy play can also support your child’s language development. As your child plays, narrate their actions and describe what they’re doing. This teaches them to use words for description and introduces new vocabulary. Describe your child’s messy play session using the senses - discuss colour, temperature, texture, weight, shapes, smells, hardness, patterns, sounds, etc. Experiencing the meaning of these words first hand will help your child understand them.

Crazy soap

Here at Spotty Otter we put Crazy soap to test, dressed in our outerwear, we had some messy fun! Crazy soap is mild and gentle, the pH balanced, and parafin free formula will cleanse and moisturise delicate skin. This amazing foam soap can be shaped, bounced, and your child is sure to love making fun shapes out of this mouldable soap as they wash, play, and improve their hand eye coordination - all at the same time! It doesn’t need to be used in the bath, we set up a tough tray outdoors to play! Crazy soap from Kids Stuff Crazy comes in a variety of colours, it’s an affordable price and lasts, you don't need much to have fun! It was super easy to tidy up, it simply dissolved with water. 

www.kidsstuff.co.uk/products/blue-crazy-foam

What to wear

No one likes the mess this type of play can sometimes create, but here at Spotty Otter we think messy play outside is the way forward. Wearing our wipe down, waterproof, and washable waterproofs it makes keeping clean and tidying up easy for you. For example, wearing our Forest Ranger Dungarees and Bogs would keep your child protected, they can get as messy as they like then simply throw it all in the washing machine!