Messy play goes beyond entertainment and fun with bright visuals. It serves as a powerful tool for children, playing a crucial role in their development across various domains, and offering a wealth of benefits. From birth throughout the early years, sensory play is highly encouraged. Did you know that 80% of brain growth occurs in the first 2-3 years of a child’s life, meaning that 90% of brain growth happens before children have even started kindergarten!
Brain Development
Sensory play plays a crucial role in building nerve connections in the brain, which are essential for learning and development. Messy sensory activities not only engage the senses but also facilitate the interpretation of sensations, leading to enhanced cognitive and creative development in children.
Language Development
Children learn to describe their experiences and observations using new vocabulary such gooey, squishy, stretchy, slimy sticky and so on, while discussing a wide range of textures and materials with their friends and educators. It also encourages children to use their manners saying please and thank you while sharing and playing together. Sensory play provides children with open-ended questions that cannot be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and instead require elaboration by exploration.
Emotional Regulation
Sensory play is a wonderful tool for helping children learn how to regulate their emotions. Touch is a powerful sense that can both stimulate and soothe. Running water though their fingers, squishing mud or cold sand between their hands even digging in soft textures can send calming signals to the brain. Messy play can provide a safe and engaging outlet for expressing strong emotions, reducing the likelihood of tantrums or meltdowns. Sensory activities can help with anxiety, stress and frustration.
Problem-solving skills
Sensory play provides a tangible environment for children to learn about cause and effect. They see how their actions directly influence what happens. For example, squeezing a squishy ball makes it change shape, dropping marbles into a bucket makes a loud noise, mixing different colours of paint creates a new colour or adding vinegar to bi-carb soda makes it bubble over. This understanding of cause and effect is crucial for solving problems, as it allows children to predict the outcome of their actions and make adjustments as needed.
Creativity, Imagination, Collaboration and social skills
Messy play is fantastic for bringing children together allowing them to experiment freely and explore many different textures, colors, and materials, sparking their curiosity and encouraging them to participate in new activities. The sensory tray itself becomes a canvas for imaginative play and storytelling as they make up new games, stories, and rules.
When playing with others, children learn to share, take turns, and learn how to communicate their ideas. They will learn how to use their manners saying thank you, please, and your welcome to one another while engaging in play.
Sensory Magic With Ebony 