Messy play might not be the easiest thing to clean up after, but as most adults remember from their own childhoods, it’s enormous fun. From an early years’ perspective, however, it can be so much more. The benefits of messy play for early years children are numerous and here we examine what some of the most important advantages are.

Physical development

During early years provision, it is important that children learn to develop key physical skills, such as balance, coordination, and gross and fine motor skills. Without mastering these, they will find themselves behind the rest of their peer group as they move on to try more demanding tasks in the future.

During messy play, children get to practice their physical skills in numerous ways. For example, they’ll need to hold and use tools like paint brushes and spades or learn to balance when carrying things. Messy play involves grasping, squeezing, stepping, bending, manoeuvring, and manipulating materials, activities during which they are naturally learning to use and control their bodies.

Cognitive development

Cognitive development, the development of thought processes, is not something you can teach young children. Processes such as decision-making, categorising, inferring, deducing and problem-solving are things that have to be developed through experience. One of the benefits of messy play is that it facilitates cognitive development.

Children will need to make decisions about the materials that they use and combine, for example, how much water will they need to make sand wet enough to build a sandcastle? When things don’t go right, they’ll need to problem-solve to fix it. What’s more, as they play together, children will also learn from each other, a process that involves observing, analysing and evaluating what others do. All these are key to cognitive development.

Language development

When playing together, messy play encourages young children to communicate and hone those all-important language skills. They’ll need to learn the names of the things they are doing and making and the tools and instruments they’ll use. As they play together, they will learn how to describe what they are doing to their friends, share ideas, ask questions and give answers.

What might seem a purely messy fun activity can involve almost constant talk. Not only do children chatter about what they are doing; messy play can often expand into roleplay, where children act out scenarios where the use of language helps them have a greater understanding of the world in which they live. For example, the mud kitchen can become the family kitchen and children take on the roles of parents making the meals. Here, children don’t just learn new words, but also new ways of expression – vocal and non-vocal.

Social and emotional skills

One of the primary aims of early years education is to develop social and emotional skills. For many children, it is the first time that they will be spending time away from their families in a social setting and it is vital that they develop the skills to interact with others and become aware of their own and others’ emotions.

The benefits of messy play here include learning to take turns and share equipment, using socially acceptable language to ask for something (Can you pass me the bucket, please?), and responding to other children’s actions in a way that is considered appropriate. At the same time, children will learn when they do something that upsets other children and will develop the skills to make amends, such as apologising. Through regular messy play, children will become better at understanding what is socially acceptable and will adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Improve creativity

Creativity sits right at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning and is considered the highest of cognitive abilities. Essentially, it is using what you have learned to produce something new. One of the great things about messy play is that it is unstructured and thus allows children the opportunity to take their messy play equipment and materials and be creative in their own way. You’ll find that they come up with highly original finger paintings and eccentric mud pies, and rather than build simple sandcastles, they’ll often create entire structures with water systems and all kinds of ingenious features using materials like sticks, stones and leaves.

While this is learning in itself, it is also developing creative skills that can be built upon in future, helping them achieve higher as they move through the school system and out into the adult world.

Conclusion

There are numerous benefits of messy play for early years children. It helps with physical, cognitive, social, emotional and language skills while providing the perfect environment for creativity. Thankfully, today, there is a broad range of messy play outdoor equipment that EYFS providers can make use of. You’ll find this equipment clean, safe, easy to tidy up after and a highly popular addition to your playground.

For more information, check out our messy play equipment.