Babies and toddlers have a natural curiosity to discover using all of their senses and messy play provides an opportunity for them to enjoy exploring objects and materials such as sand, water, paint, playdough and gloop.

Messy play helps to develop imagination and experimentation, allowing your child to develop their curiosity as well as their concentration. Gloop is an interesting messy play activity as it can be both a solid and a liquid, allowing it to be manipulated and run through fingers.

Exploring Messy Play

Messy play is great for children to explore new food and textures. This can give them confidence to try new things.

Here are some ideas to make it a little easier and get you started…

Things to know:

Messy play helps to:

• Develop all your baby’s senses: smell, taste, sight, hearing and touch.
• Support speech and language development, through the use of describing words, e.g. soft, rough, cold, warm, squidgy, etc.
• Develop a child’s mark-making (early writing), fine and gross motor skills, hand-to-eye coordination, and feeding themselves.

Ideas for managing mess:

• Let them experiment with messy play in the bath so it stays in one space that is easy to rinse clean.
• Use outdoor space and/or a play trough or paddling pool to contain materials.
• Have a large table cloth that is a wipe clean material that can be put on the floor to protect the space.
• Use natural products that are easy to clean up such as water, sand or homemade gloop or playdough.
• Use aprons or old clothes when embracing messy play.

Safety note: Messy play activities must be supervised by an adult.

Things to try:

• Cornflour
• Custard
• Pasta
• Baked beans
• Spaghetti hoops
• Porridge oats
• Mashed potato

Consider using other non-food objects with these foods, e.g. cars, toy bugs, paint brushes, animals etc.

Making gloop

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of cornflour
• 1 cup of water
• Slowly add the water to the cornflour, stirring as you go.
• You can add food colouring or scents to add a different sensory experience.

Helpful Websites

For more information on helping your child to communicate, visit How can I help my child communicate with me? – CBeebies Parenting

For more information on the importance of play for babies, visit Why is it important to play with newborns? – CBeebies Parenting

For more information on how toddlers learn through play, visit How toddlers learn through play – CBeebies Parenting