Messy Children – Let Them Make a Mess
Mess, is such a scary word to some of us. Messy children and making a mess are part of any quality childcare program. But also making a mess is such an important tool for your young one.
Making a mess gives your children benefits such as:
Fine & Gross Motor Skills
- Fine Motor Skills are the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, usually involving the synchronization of hands and fingers.
- Gross Motor Skills are the abilities usually acquired during childhood as part of a child’s motor learning.
Experimentation in Action
Imagine if you will, a four-year-old with his/her hands in a bowl of shaving cream and marbles. What is educational about that you may ask? Well, that child could be doing one of many things.
- Counting by touch
- Feeling shapes
- Guessing what the object is.
Not seeing the object forces the child to think about what it is or could be. It trains the brain to find a number or imagine what that item is.
Allowing for Messy Children Exploration
Now imagine setting that child at a table and placing these ingredients in front of them.
- Three bowls
- White rice
- Food coloring
If that child takes rice and adds two colors they can for example see that blue and yellow make green. They may have heard this before but never truly grasped it until they watched it change in front of their own eyes.
Both examples are of messy children and require cleanup. For me as a mom, this just opens another door, How to Clean Up, after themselves. So not only did they learn how color blending works but they also learned a valuable life lesson.
This blog was created by Tracy Watts who is a current Child Development Associate (CDA) student with CDAClass.org. Tracy is a mother of seven and also works with educating other children in her local community. She is a substitute teacher in the local public school and works full-time at a childcare program. Her goal is to finish her CDA course and get a full-time position in the public school system.
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