MESSY PLAY: Using Natural Resources

For our project our chosen area of provision was play based learning, looking specifically at messy play in early years and how this can aid a child’s development. In order to explain the importance of messy play within the early years we have taken a definition from Bernadette Duffy ‘A huge part of messy play is to encourage children to become creative and imaginative when doing an activity/ playing. ‘By encouraging creativity and imagination we are promoting children’s ability to explore and comprehend their world and increasing their opportunities to make new connections and reach new understandings’.

We chose messy play as our area of provision because we felt it is important for children to be able to express themselves through art and crafts. Also, some children may not have access to art materials and resources at home so it is important that children are encouraged to have these opportunities and experiences within settings.

Our project

The name of our chosen activity was ‘bringing the outdoors; in’. To explain this, we collected resources from outside, such as leaves and twigs in different shapes and sizes. In order to ensure our resources were suitable for the children to use, we checked over each item for dirt, thorns etc.  We then set up a table with paints, glue, scissors and paper. The idea behind our project was to encourage children to use their imagination and creativity to produce a picture of their choice. We laid the resources and materials out on the table so the children could choose the resources and materials that interested them individually. The paint was provided so the children could have a try at printing with the different resources and seeing what shapes they could create. The scissors and glue was provided to encourage the children to cut and stick the resources on the paper, in order to create collages. The activity was supervised by adults as there were sharp objects such as scissors, however, the children were able to independently create their own picture using materials and resources chosen entirely by them. Although we designed our project to be adult supervised it was also designed to be child led, we thought this would be important as Rogerson from Childcare Training LTD said “it is important to encourage a "child centered" approach in settings by supporting a creative process for children without focusing on an end product”.

We chose our activity because it is very versatile as it can be carried out indoors and outdoors (depending on weather). Due to the different colours of the leaves and the bare trees/ twigs we were able to teach the children about different seasons and the life cycles of the world around them, (which links to the understanding of the world in EYFS).

                  

We feel that our group project was a success in many ways, first and foremost the group work was equally divided between the three of us. We each picked an area within the presentation and made our own notes to add when speaking in the group. When choosing the area of provision and project, we each had ideas and worked as a team to come up with our final ideas. When doing the presentation, we think it went well as everyone in the class joined in, doing our project when we finished speaking. Everyone seemed to enjoy taking part and the hands on approach of our activity. If we were to do the project again, we would spend more time collecting different resources from the outdoors and making more variations of the activity itself, for example: a group making one big picture together. All in all we were happy with our presentation and our result.