Eastern Hills Community Kindy & Playgroup Messy Play Term 2 2023

July 14 2023

Eastern Hills Community Kindergarten & Playgroup Messy Event!

It was so lovely meeting all our local families and welcoming you all to our little community hub for our first Messy Play Event. Thank you to our volunteers Amanda & Ellen for donating their time and creating a fun session! We sold out by having just over 20 families joining us in exploring 10 sensory zones. Messy play is the open-ended exploration of materials and their properties. Activities like squishing clay, pouring sand, and sorting stones allow children to repeat and experiment as they like. Children are naturally curious, and messy play engages their senses at a developmental level that is appropriate for them. They learn foundational cognitive principles as they exercise motor, language, and social skills. Messy play offers one of the best integrated learning experiences young children can have.

Why is it important?  (sourced from The Benefits of Mess Play the Heart & Science of Play)

Fine and gross motor skills
Messy play helps children pick up objects, and allow textures and materials to be moulded and flow through their hands and fingers. This type of play helps develop your child’s fine-motor skills – those little movements and muscles in the hands used to hold and control a pencil and cutlery, thread a needle or tie shoelaces. For very young children and babies, the exploration of objects through touch can often end up with the item in question in their mouths! Plan for this and make sure the materials are edible. 

Hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, body control and balance

Hand-eye coordination is when your child tracks the movements of their hands with their eyes, which is essential for reading and decoding. Spatial awareness is the ability of a child to understand where they are in relation to objects or where objects or structures are in relation to each other. Body control and balance is the ability to know where your body parts are in three-dimensional space. 

Creativity
Your child will be able to use their imagination in order to create shapes, forms and objects in an exploratory way. 

Problem solving
With messy play, your child can increase their concentration and ability to problem solve. They begin to select and use resources appropriately and often see a task through from start to finish. Early science experiments are found in messy play, such as cause and effect and changing solids to liquids. 

Language development
Words such as “gooey, crispy, slimy and soft” can be used when your child explores their surroundings by touching different materials. You may hear a few “ickys and yucks” too! This is a good sign as they are starting to make decisions on how things feel. Some materials do genuinely feel “icky”.

Supporting your child’s language development, helping them understand how things feel and how to describe them is aided by adult prompts. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling are all ways children learn to think, feel, and compare their environment and the objects within it. Using multiple senses at the same time stimulates learning and language development. 

Building relationships with others
When you child plays with a sibling or a friend, they will chatter along quite happily as they explore the messy materials and their senses are introducing new words into their vocabulary. An opportunity to play alongside or together is a valuable social experience for your child. Learning how to share the workspace, equipment, and experiences is an excellent skill to transfer into later life. Children learn to trust others and cooperate with kindness. 

Cognitive development
Messy play for babies and children helps developing brains bridge nerve connections and assists children in learning differences and similarities. The use of sensory material creates hands-on self-directed play, encouraging discovery and development. This approach appeals to children who have different learning and thinking styles.

Inclusive play
Because there’s no right or wrong way to engage in sensory-rich messy play, it’s particularly beneficial to children with special needs and those who enjoy a practical approach to learning. 

As our Messy Play event was such a huge success we’ll be organising another event for Term 3. With another 10 fun messy play stations for your little ones to explore. We look forward to continuing to make new connections with all our local families and welcome families with children aged 0-5yrs to enrol for future messy play events. 

We are currently taking 2024 Kindy enrolments and expressions of interest to enrol for kindy 2025. You can find out more at www.easternhillskindy.com.au or email us at ehckindy@gmail.com. We also have our Term 3 Playgroup sessions running, Thursday & Friday 9:30am-11:30am weeks 1-10, Term 3.