I absolutely love messy play and everything that goes along with it. I don’t mind the clean up and I absolutely love seeing my kids messy and happy, BUT I hate having to think and plan really complicated things for them to only play in it for 30 seconds and then leave me with the mess.
I’ve pinterested my ideas, spent ages setting it all up, spent a fortune and then they’re not even interested! At Tiddlers it’s all cool, we set it up and if they don’t play, well no big deal they can just play instead but there isn’t that same option at home and it can feel frustrating and annoying!
So I’ve collated all of my messy play bases and chosen my top 5 easy to set up, low effort messy plays that are quick, easy and more importantly the ones most played with by Little Tiddlers!
First up we have the classic…WATER! It’s simple, its easy, it’s honestly the most popular and played with messy base. Add toys, cups, spoons, pans, whisks, sieves (the list is endless) and watch them play. It’s absolutely amazing for developing their physical and imagination skills as well as supporting their cognitive development. Scooping, pouring, pretending to make soup or potions etc. Don’t tie yourself down to one specific theme; keep it broad, put out loads of different things and let them make up their own minds about what the water is or what it represents. That freedom of choice can make all the difference in how much and how long they want to play and engage with it.
Next up we have another simple one and it’s OATS. Plain old porridge oats you can get at the supermarket for less than £1. Once again, its super open ended which is just amazing for their imaginations and if you have older children or friends around it’s amazing for social and language development too. They can watch how other children play and learn to copy or join in when they’re old enough (around age 4 is when children really start to play together as opposed to alongside each other although they may start a bit younger)
This is the first of the really ‘marmite’ sensory bases and it’s OOBLECK. Cornflour mixed with water in a 2:1 ratio (2 cups cornflour to 1 cup water). Keep it simple and mix it in the tuff tray so theres even less set up. If you can be bothered and you have it to hand you can add in a couple of drops of food colouring but you really don’t have to. It’s an amazing liquid/solid texture and really captures little imaginations. When you compact it quickly in your hands it’s a solid and then when you let go it reverts to a liquid. It’s a science lesson through play and it really gets their brains whirring. Once again, I would recommend keeping the options open and providing a range of materials to play with such as spoons, plastic cars or animals etc however if you do have time you can always theme it loosely around a story and sneak in some reading and story time too. The play time will help with the comprehension of the story but don’t put too much pressure on yourself, not every day or every play has to be a learning opportunity! Play is inherently fantastic for young children’s development so don’t overthink it. Some days can be just getting by and letting them get messy so you can have a cup of tea and a bag of crisps in peace kind of day…
Next is another dry more sensory base and its RICE. Dried rice that you can dye fun colours if your heart desires but we’re keeping it quick today and just dumping a whole bag into the tuff tray as it is. They LOVE it. It’s a textural dream, there are so many ways to play with it and it’s SO EASY to set up. You can put it in in the morning, stick some toys in it and let them loose. They can feed their teddies, pretend to cook, hide things in it scoop it up with their hands or with spoons or use their toy diggers to push it around (cheerios are also amazing for this but they’re more expensive)
Finally we have my favourite messy play base that requires the most (but still super minimal) effort but is so worth it in my opinion and it’s BUBBLE FOAM. Mix a decent squirt of bubble bath into a bowl with about a half cup of water and use either a hand whisk or an electric hand whisk (this makes firmer bubbles) to whisk it up until thick foamy bubbles form. Tip them into your tuff tray, add spoons, cups, toys, magnatiles etc and let them go nuts. It’s a great one for outdoors if you have outside space but equally it’s nowhere near as messy as water to do it inside with a couple of towels down to save your floor. Again, you can add food colouring to change the colour but it’s absolutely not necessary. It’s again, amazing for all kinds of developmental stages for children. They can talk to you about what they’re doing and how it feels, use their imagination to re-enact things they’ve seen in their everyday lives (scooping the foam as ice cream for example) and develop their physical skills by using utensils to move the foam. The opportunites for play and therefore learning are endless.
Hopefully this gives you some ideas for when you want to be ‘that mum’ but just don’t have the energy and gives you some confidence that you’re doing a great job!
Zoe x