September 2024 | Issue No. 5

Splish, Splash, Splat – Hooray for Messy Play!

Let’s get ready for messy play with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers! Messy play is the open-ended exploration of materials and their properties. Activities like squishing clay, pouring sand, and sorting stones allow children to repeat and experiment as they like. Children are naturally curious, and messy play engages their senses at a developmental level that is appropriate for them.

Messy play can include a variety of materials and is a great way to experience natural elements with all the senses. It gives children the freedom to explore the textures, sounds, and smells of materials. Make a mud puddle on the playground for children to splash in; use a sensory table to splash, scoop, and pour water; support infants to splash in a small tub; dig in a sand box; and more!

If becoming too messy is a concern, include plans with children to clean up as needed. When adults create opportunities for messy play, children learn to use perceptual information — what they see, hear, touch, smell, and even taste — to learn about the world around them. Let’s dig in and learn more!

Be intentional about your exploration:

• Always check with families about allergies or reactions that children may have to messy materials before engaging in play. Plan adaptations to support all children’s play.
• Model for children how to use their senses to explore materials. Encourage sniffing playdough and rubbing sand on the top of hands. Call attention to the sound of water as it enters a funnel. For children who are still in the developmental stage of mouthing items, use materials that are edible, such as food coloring, mint, water, etc.
• Follow children’s lead. Adults can scaffold children’s readiness to participate in messy play by providing options to sniff instead of feel, or offering tools like spoons, scoops, and gloves. Some children will be all in, some more cautious, and others overwhelmed. Pay attention to verbal and nonverbal cues of readiness.
• Connect messy exploration to curriculum. You can read books, extend learning into other play areas, and talk in small or large groups to encourage children to predict what they will feel, see, and smell.
• Share the benefits of messy play with families and ensure they are prepared for what children will experience. Offer opportunities for families to express concerns and address them. For home-based experiences, talk through the messy play with families and share concrete steps for exploration.
• Talk with families to select materials and tools from their culture or region to help children get to know their community as they explore. Talk with children about the items, particularly any special meaning they hold.
• Prepare yourself and other adults to explore joyfully. Address concerns ahead of time to ensure adults model interest and excitement and feel ready to support children to their level of comfort. For example, create a plan so you and other teachers will be ready to get messy and be prepared to encourage with questions and comments to extend learning. See below for more resources to support this area!

Gather materials to support your messy play:

• Plan carefully for messy play, including determining a defined space, gathering materials and tools ahead of time, and considering how children might react to the experience.
• Prepare the designated messy play space. Consider setting up in places with tiled areas or outdoors for spills and splashes. You can also use tarps or shower curtains to protect floors and for easy clean up.
• Ensure children have clothes suitable for getting messy or provide smocks or aprons as needed.
• Ask families about allergies before adding materials to messy play and work together to create adaptations or substitute safe materials.
• Include items with different textures for children to explore — smooth, rough, sticky, cool, warm, and more.
• Create opportunities for messy play outdoors when possible. Help children find sticks, leaves, and rocks as building materials. Notice when children use these materials in novel ways.
• If using water for play, make sure to follow local health and safety guidelines such as constant supervision, having individual tubs for children, or switching water between children as appropriate.
• Add materials to water to mix it up, like dish soap, coloring, ice, tools for scooping and dumping, items to sink or float, and more.
• Use tools such as a ruler, balance scale, or measuring cup to discover similarities and differences of materials. Encourage children to compare and sort materials by their qualities. Ask older children to describe their process for grouping objects.
• Practice using sensory bins in the program and, after children are used to them, encourage families to use them in messy play at home. A simple plastic bin can be used like a sensory table to keep material engagements contained. These handy bins are easily cleaned and they can facilitate all kinds of wet and dry material engagements.

Consider adaptations that help everyone engage:

• Teach children about the expectations of play in the messy play space. Post visual supports to show how many children can play at the same time, steps for preparing to play including putting on smocks, and how to clean up when play is finished.
• Be respectful of the local environment; for example, if water is scarce or it is culturally important, consider using different messy play materials.
• If using water for play, make sure to follow safety guidelines and constant supervision.
• Ensure materials can be accessed at different levels by using sensory tables, plastic tubs on small platforms, or large open containers.
• Observe children who might be tempted to mouth or eat materials closely. Stay in arm’s length and offer reminders of safe ways to explore.
• Follow the child’s lead if they are sensory avoidant or have sensory integration challenges. Offer multiple ways to engage in play using gloves or tools like small shovels, popsicle sticks, or spoons.
• Use a mixture of simple and complex descriptive language to help children express what they are touching, seeing, hearing, or smelling. Words like splish, splash, and splat help children describe sensory experiences and can bring joy to the activity! Encourage children to play with language and make up their own words, too!

Look for connections to suggested Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework (ELOF) subdomain goals shown below, though this activity could be adapted to connect with any domain:

• Infant-Toddler Perceptual, Motor, and Physical Development 5. Child uses sensory information and body awareness to understand how their body relates to the environment.
• Infant-Toddler Approaches to Learning 6. Child demonstrates emerging initiative in interactions, experiences, and explorations.
• Preschool Language and Communication 6. Child understands and uses a wide variety of words for a variety of purposes.
• Preschool Science 3. Child compares and categorizes observable phenomena.

Connect and Extend

Create a culture of inquiry with great questions.

One strategy for extending conversations with children involves asking meaningful questions such as, “What do you think will happen next?” Asking open-ended questions with many possible answers lets children express their ideas. They can provide explanations and make predictions. For some children, especially infants and toddlers, this may mean providing opportunities to think and watching for nonverbal responses and then giving prompts or labeling their gestures. For example, ask:

• How does wet dirt feel compared to dry dirt?
• Why do you think the sticks float and the rocks sink?
• What do you think will happen if we add water to the clay?

Develop creative connections and be a “good relative.”

What does it mean to be a good relative? In many American Indian and Alaska Native cultures, being a good relative is a way to describe treating others, the land, and all living creatures with care, kindness, and respect. It is a practice we want to encourage in all children and adults, in all cultural backgrounds.

We are all related and connected. How does this connection extend into messy play? Mother Earth is the dirt and holds the water we use in messy play. Earth grows the food we eat and the trees whose leaves, branches, and pine needles we explore. Here are some ways you can make connections as you plan for messy play:

• Talk about Mother Earth and introduce different words to describe earth, such as soil, mud, clay, and rocks. Speak in English and the children’s home or Indigenous language.
• Consider creating a garden at your program where children can grow produce. Provide opportunities for children to use their senses to explore items such as berries in a bucket. Examine the colors when the berries are whole, how they feel when they are squished, the differences in fragrance, and taste of different types of edible berries.
• Engage families by inviting them to share recipes and join in preparing snacks with children from foods harvested. Messy play can be a part of mixing recipes! Remember to incorporate words in the children’s home or Indigenous languages.

Take a Look

Supporting Messy Play with Infants and Toddlers
Some researchers define “messy play” as play that emphasizes the active exploration of materials and their properties. In this webinar, examine the specific learning that happens when infants and toddlers engage in messy play. Explore effective practices staff can use to manage the mess while also managing the classroom.

It’s Time for Play! Messy Play
When children engage in messy play, they explore with their senses, build fine motor skills, and strengthen their concentration and focus. Watch this brief video to share some ways to encourage and safely engage in messy play with children.

Digging Deeper into Why Sensory Play Matters

Children who explore with their senses learn principles of physical development more quickly. This is especially important for infants and toddlers, who must learn foundational skills before learning more complex ones. Research demonstrates that early visual and motor skills are related to later math and language skills.

Simple activities, like playing with playdough or shredding paper, build fine and gross motor skills. But they also support learning related to cause and effect, number sense, and other important cognitive skills.
Open-ended activities like pouring sand or water, smearing foam, and making patterns with loose parts provide children with opportunities to experiment at their own developmental level and pace. Allowing children to direct their own exploration this way leads to maximized learning and engagement. Research also shows that when adults respond to and encourage children’s open-ended play and exploration, they support improved engagement in learning.

Messy play harnesses children’s spontaneous exploration to help them learn. Children develop curiosity, initiative, focus and persistence through messy play. These are foundational skills in the Approaches to Learning domain of ELOF, which identifies learning strategies. Messy play activities develop children’s autonomy and provide safe environments in which to practice these crucial learning skills.

Read About It

The Benefits of Messy Play for Infants and Toddlers
Messy play engages the senses and children learn foundational cognitive principles as they exercise motor, language, and social skills. Listen to this podcast for strategies to make this activity fun and manageable.

Grow Staff and Family Understanding of and Comfort with Outdoor Play and Learning
Some adults are comfortable with the outdoors and interacting with nature; others are less comfortable or even fearful. When adults are comfortable in the environment, they are eager to facilitate children’s exploration. They are willing and able to help children engage with natural elements, such as nonhazardous plants, animals, and bugs and insects; dirt and mud; rain and snow; water; shells and stones; and more. Check out this resource for strategies for addressing adult discomfort or inexperience with the outdoors and embracing the joy of messy play!

Joy for the Journey

Children need the freedom to appreciate the infinite resources of their hands, their eyes and their ears, the resources of forms, materials, sounds and colours. — Loris Malaguzzi

Children are born naturalists. They explore the world with all of their senses, experiment in the environment, and communicate their discoveries to those around them. — The Audubon Nature Preschool

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The Play the Head Start Way Newsletter is produced monthly by the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning. Email ecdtl@ecetta.info to submit questions or suggestions for future newsletter topics.