Messy Play - Creating Christmas Snowmen!

Creating Christmas Snowmen- Messy Play

Our project was to create an activity for an Early Years setting, from which they can enjoy themselves and get 'stuck in', while learning and developing in the 7 key areas of the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage). Our area of provision was messy play. We take on Duffy's definition of messy play, which is 'to play with something and it is through play which is a part of the creative process.' We deem this to be essential for children's development, because it improves gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and pre-literacy skills, amongst other abilities.  Unfortunately, some parents are against this method of learning because their children come home in dirty clothes which they then have to clean. There are also on-going debates as to the value of messy play within a nursery, that messy play is just children having fun, not learning anything in the process.
 
Our chosen method of achieving this, was to create Christmas Snowmen. This involves children using a wide range of materials with a variety of colours and textures to create their own snowmen. This can be done individually or in a group. Many resources were available for the children to use from cotton wool to crate paper.
 

This is the template we used for our activity. Children could use this, or design their own template for a snowman.

This project was set out to ensure children develop emotionally, physically and socially whilst enjoying the learning process. The EYFS standards would work hand in hand alongside our project. An example would be; children would have an insight into the world around them by learning about the Christmas tradition and the changing of seasons. This activity helps children to improve on their literacy and language skills by discussing how the materials feel, what they are adding to their snowman and why.  

This shows someone creating their snowman, using glue and cotton wool. We encouraged more materials to be used later on!

Personally, what we have learnt from this activity is that children learn better once having an example to compare with and when the children are enjoying themselves. Many children at a young age are shy or less confident than others of which this activity helps those work alongside others who are more confident to complete tasks well. Upon documenting our work, we found that an ethical issue was when taking photos or recording video footage we would need parental consent to do so. However, if children are aware they are being observed they may behave differently to how they would without observation (Observer bias). Therefore, we have learnt that the best way to document our activity is to sit with the child and ask intriguing questions as to what the child is doing and individual choices such as; the addition of a scarf on their snowman.
 
We have achieved an insight into the way children learn and the way they cooperate with other children. This has given us a solid activity that we could re-create in the future in our own settings.

Here are just two of the finished products, how would you create yours?