Messy Play Facts

If you give children a choice of fun, tactile materials and interactive activities to play with them, it will enable them to explore different concepts for themselves and therefore develop their physical, cognitive and social skills. Hands on play such as painting, sticking, sand and water play increase children’s self awareness of what they themselves can create with their own creativity and imagination. They build strong social and emotional skills, physical, communication, numeracy and literacy skills.

Messy Little Hands helps to build children’s social and emotional skills by working as a group they learn from others by example and as they see others learning from them it helps build their own self value. They also learn from watching the group that there are many ways of using the creative materials and this helps to build self-assurance.

Messy Little Hands helps to build children’s physical skills Using paintbrushes, glue spreaders and rollers in a particular way improves co-ordination, strengthens muscle control and improves fine motor skills. Practising using pencils and crayons develops their skills from making random marks and scribbles to deliberate actions. They can develop their finger skills by placing materials onto areas that they have glued and also peeling stickers to use in collages.

Messy Little Hands helps to build children’s communication, numeracy and literacy skills by understanding that pictures are formed from a number of shapes, sizes and colours etc. Problem solving is very important, children need to know how shapes make up overall pictures such as a house is made from squares, triangles and rectangles.