Messy play can get a little repetitive, how do you enrich your messy play at home? Here are six simple ideas that you can try today. Let us know how it goes! 

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6 Ideas to Expand Messy Play

Are you doing messy play at home and looking for ways to expand messy play? Below are 6 ways to expand messy play.

1. Hid items inside of the slime/dough
2. Use I wonder statements
   1. I wonder what creatures can be made
   2. I wonder what adventures we are going on
   3. I wonder what we will find/ make on our adventure
3. Follow the child’s lead with theme/play and expand
   1. If a play theme is going camping maybe a fort can be built around the table to pretend play being in a tent and use brown play dough to make bugs
   2. Add a new location
   3. Expand the location features (are there rocks, grass etc)
4. Go on an adventure through the house to find ingredients
   1. Pretend to fly through the galaxy to locate items
   2. Hop and crawl like different animals for find ingredients
5. Read a book related to messy play idea
   1. Bartholemew and the Oobleck
   2. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
   3. Pete the Cat I Love my White Shoes
6. Use music/singing songs
   1. Sing the Itsy-Bitsy Spider while doing water play or fizzy painting
   2. Paint to different speeds of music

Messy play activities with house hold ingredients

• Cloud dough directions found at: https://masandpas.com/cloud-dough/
• Marshmallow fluff slime directions found at: https://thesoccermomblog.com/super-stretchy-edible-marshmallow-fluff-slime/
• Oobleck/ goop directions found at: https://abcsofliteracy.com/how-to-make-oobleck/
• No cook play dough directions found at: https://www.kiwifamilies.co.nz/articles/easiest-no-cook-play-dough-recipe/
• Fizzy paint directions found at: https://taminglittlemonsters.com/fizzy-painting-stem-activity-for-kids/
• Sticky paint directions: mix corn syrup with a few drops of food coloring
• Thin layer or salt/sugar: Thin layer of salt/sugar on a cookie sheet to draw shapes/ scenes/ and letters
• Cloud jars directions found at: https://thestemlaboratory.com/rain-cloud-jar/
• Coffee filter coloring directions found at: https://www.projectsforpreschoolers.com/coffee-filter-painting/

Kelsey York, OTD/S

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