How do you feel about mess? Do you let your children have free rein around the house to play with what they like? To pull all the cushions of the sofa to make a boat? To use all their bedsheets to build a den? To take pasta from the kitchen cupboards to use in their pretend kitchen?
And how do you feel about them playing in the garden? Do you let them dig? Make mud pies? Pick up worms? Fill the watering cans to make a swamp? Pick leaves and flowers to ‘bake’ with?
Do you give them messy materials to play with? Play dough? Paint? Felt tip pens? Sand? Glitter?
Someone told me recently that they’d never let their children play with playdough. And someone else commented that they spend so much time cleaning already that they don’t want to encourage their kids to make even more mess. This got me wondering how everyone else views messy play. I wonder if you encourage this kind of play at home or do you keep it just for pre-school? Do you let babies and toddlers get stuck in or do you reserve it for your older children? Do you think messy play is beneficial or educational or just for fun? And what do your children think about messy play – do they love it or loathe it?
I’m not looking to criticise anyone’s approach, I’m just genuinely interested to see what the opinion is on messy play. Will you share your thoughts and tell me what you think?
I believe that as adults we find it very difficult to allow our children to be messy. We have been conditioned to have them presentable, neat & tidy. Letting your children learn from messy play is so beneficial but you need to be taught how to let go first.
When I had my second daughter 6 years ago, my Mum was running a Learning Through Play course. She invited us to attend; where babies were encouraged to play with gloop, spaghetti, jelly, hand & foot painting. I recoiled in horror! She was dressed in her best clothes etc. Mum was having none of it & stripped her to her baby vest, and she had the best time.
After a dose of the smelling salts, I did recover and gradually have learnt to go with the flow, and the green fingers & toes do eventually fade!
Yes, to all of the activities above. I have a just turned 3 year old and a 20 month old and they both heartily enjoy messy play. We do it both at home and sometimes at specific classes (like a craft class for example), at playgroup, and they both have a half day at nursery so do it there too.
I resigned myself to the conclusion that cream sofas and cream carpets were a mistake about 3 days after brining my firstborn home. Reflux hath no concern for your furnishings. Especially reflux combined with weaning and sweet potato. We moved house before no.2 came along so the carpets didn’t take too much of a battering to a place with wooden floors. Easy to clean! The cream sofas have been covered with food, paint, felt-tip pens, playdoh, awful leaky crayola first markers, mud, grass stains, etc etc, and I think even they know that they are destined for the dump in the not too distant future.
But my view is that if my children enjoy it it doesn’t really matter. I kind of accepted that there would be mess and all manner of things they would like and I might not when I had kids, and it’s only furniture at the end of the day. When I get my next sofas I will be a smarter shopper.
As a child I always drew and painted and did dough and plasticsene and I ended up doing design at uni. I loved it and that’s probably why I encourage my children to get stuck in and enjoy it. Whether it is beneficial or educational – maybe? I think it encourages them to be experimental and try out different things – even if they only do it at specific ‘messy play’ classes. Ok, I think I have rambled enough now!
I think you make a lot of sense. I agree with your view, if my children enjoy it, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a couch at the end of they day. I too have gone through many pieces of furniture, I will by something nice, when they are grown, until then, the furniture will be a mess, the floors will alwawys have something stuck to them, and my childrens faces will be smiling, and thats whats important.
We love messy play. I’m not a clean clean person with kids. I love using everyday items with play. We use playdough, gloop, water, birdseed. You name it. I bought some jelly to try this month for the littlest one. My oldest was reluctant to touch so I really got into trying shaving foam etc.
Many people don’t see it as educational because they don’t see it in books and on blogs that much. Doesn’t look good right. Also things fall out of favour there are cycles of play ideas.
embrace the mess 🙂 although it is much easier for me to let the kids at preschool get down and dirty than it ever is for me to let my own kids engage in really messy play at home. at home all i can see is the mess i will need to clean up – sometimes i just need to take a deep breathe and let them go for it – but i still freak out inside my head.
i don’t know what the difference is – i still have to clean up the mess at preschool!
Messes? LOL. Why, yes, we do 🙂 Here’s a recent article I wrote about the mess my kids made while my hubby & I were in the other room: https://www.examiner.com/x-22404-Rim-Country-Early-Childhood-Examiner~y2010m2d25-Let-your-kids-entertain-themselves-even-if-its-messy
Here is another article about the value (and importance) of messes: https://www.examiner.com/x-22404-Rim-Country-Early-Childhood-Examiner~y2009m10d19-Should-kids-be-given-the-freedom-to-explore-and-make-messes
Research has actually shown us that messes are very important to a child’s mental and emotional development. Kids need time to explore, dig in the dirt, play with household items, pull things from drawers, put things back, take things in and out, figure out how items work, etc, etc. This is critical in the development of their ability to problem solve.
Yes – I totally agree with your take on this. Although I can’t STAND messes (I feel as though I need to breathe into a paper bag on a daily basis), I also know it’s what my kids need and I love my kids enough to give them what they need 😉
yes to mess! But it’s worth mentioning that not all children enjoy messy play equally. My youngest loves getting her hands wet and gloopy but my eldest hates it. Don’t know how this difference arose – I’ve always actively encouraged playing with different textures and materials and “getting messy”.
Depends what mood I’m in. I do let my kids indulge in messy play – we have wooden floors, leather upholsery and wipe clean walls, all of which minimises the damage. But I still dislike playdough which always seems to manage to get trodden into those carpets which we do have. We have no garden (unfortunately). If we did I’d let them do more, but I used to have sand, until the youngest started tipping it everywhere, over the balcony, over his brother’s head etc. and it became expensive replacing it, and time-consuming to clean up. I may relent again this summer, because they do love to play with the sand.
My whole house sparkles with glitter which you can never clean up properly (quite pretty really)
My kids love messy play, but we sort of have controlled messy play, so they don’t have free range of it as such but I will get everything out and let them dive in.
I’ve learned to become more relaxed about mess, I have to say it did (and still does sometimes) grate on me epsecially when I’ve spent ages cleaning the floors etc but my little one loves it so much I can see the benefits so we do playdough, baking, colouring, chalking, water play, gardening, stick&paste pics, the lot, more fun than cleaning any day 🙂
There’s always plenty of mess in this house. Playing too. Yet somehow I have a small boy who insists on cleaning, unless he’s in the muck. Muck, it would seem, isn’t dirty.
I encouraged to see so many people encouraging messy play. I’ll be sharing some ideas on different materials to try over the coming weeks. Cathy
It’s my favourite thing to do and it occupies them for ages, so anything goes and the tidying up is worth it! I took part in a brilliant messy play session at my childrens’ nursery where we got to experince messy play from a child’s perspective – really good fun had by all:
https://www.parentshaped.co.uk/2010/04/273/
I am studying to be an Early Childhood Teacher and Messy play is just the best it provides so much oppotunities for children to delvelop holisticly. And it’s all worth it to see the smiles on their faces! I know some of my best childhood memories involved some sort of mess, i am glad my mother let me experiece messy play when i was young. You have to think whats more important a dirty top or your childrens enjoyment and development! 🙂
I used to be a preschool teacher and I also place a high value on messy play. I think that it is important to remember (especially when you are caring for other people’s children) that our idea of constructivist learning is also very culturally bound. We have this strong belief in independence and that part of learning is figuring things out on your own. It is highly relevant for our culture but is not acceptable for every family. I’ve seen a lot of teachers clash with parents who could not understand why their children were so dirty at the end of the day. The teacher thought – hey they are learning. The parents thought – she is not taking care of my child to let her get so messy. The key is to have strong relationships with good communication.
Just another perspective. 🙂
Love your blog.
Emily, that’s a really interesting perspective. I have seen parents concerned that their child appears a messy at the end of a session, and I agree that communication (both ways) makes such a difference to making the relationship work well.
As a childminder I embrace messy play. I believe that a happy busy child is learning. I do believe as well that children need to also learn the boundaries of mess making and how to help to cleanup afterwards.
Thanks for your comment lesley – lovely to hear from you. I agree that getting them to help with the clear up is great – for them and us!
We do messy play 🙂
The whole house needs cleaning any way and they always need a bath so why not?
Great thinking Carla!
I love messy play, and I hate cleaning my own house, love cleaning other places, weird I know. My kids are great at messy play, I don’t even think of it as play specifically, it’s daily life. My husband says, you don’t know how much fun they’ve had, until you see the ring around the tub. My boys are great ring leavers, and it makes me feel good to see it. I have noticed that I didn’t see any comments about not liking it, no one wants to admit they don’t let their kids play messy. I don’t mind if they came home dirty from school, and I don’t mind if my 6month old gets into the paints with her brothers, anything can be cleaned. Play-doh in carpets, oh well, I have kids, don’t like it, don’t come over. My Home is for my kids, I just live here. I am not into it for educational play, or just for fun, either way they learn and have fun. As for helping with the cleaning, personally, I would rather just get it done then have them help, so I guess my kids get off easy there. I do think it’s a great question, and I would like to put out there, that if you are not a messy parents, you still don’t have the right to say anything about me letting my kids get messy, I get it all the time, you know your kids are a mess, yes, and they are smiling and happy, do you have a problem with that? I have bath tub.
I hate messy play!
I seriously can’t stand the way slime, fingerpaints, and bubbles feel. They feel horribly cold and icky! These things gross me out just by looking at them.
I wouldn’t allow any messy play near me, for the sake of me not getting messy myself.