Anyone who knows me well enough will know that i'm really not a fan of 'messy play'. I know this may come as a shock due to me being the forest school leader and having to deal with a lot of mud! Well this week I have been a different person and taken part in a 'gloop' activity with Nic in the garden and Ez in the Burrow.
So gloop is a weird and wonderful creation that combines water, corn flour and food colouring. All you have to do is put a pile of corn flour in a tray, pour enough water over the top and mix it all together until the corn flour dissolves. Then simply add some food colouring to make it look a little more exciting and there you have it, a nice pile of gloopy gloop.
Once the gloop is out there for all to touch the children act like a swarm of bees around a honey pot. They absolutely love to get stuck in and most importantly like to get MESSY! We feel the gloop between our fingers, we cover our arms in gloop and love to use our finger tips to make movements within the tray. Ez seems to get a little too excited about the gloop sometimes and needs to be calmed down before she hurts herself (haha). The other day when I said it was time to tidy it away her bottom lip came out and a little stomp of her feet.
Soraya recently attended a mark making course that asked them how we expect children to sit down and use a pencil/crayon before they learn how to use gross motor skills with their arms. Gloop really helps with the children's fine/motor skills as it allows them to use either their fine motor skills (fingers mainly) or gross (big arm movements).
After my experience with gloop this week it really has opened my horizons to messy play. I'm not going to go all out and cover myself with messy play but I'm hopefully gradually going to put my fear of the messiness behind me (maybe). For the children we will continue to explore and play with everything messy and the messier the activity the more fun it will be :-) I apologise in advance for the amount of clothes washing you may have to encounter.
Thanks for reading,
Lauren