Messy Play - GLOOP

Messy play – GLOOP!

After researching the many different areas and provisions provided in a early years setting, Our group decided to look into re-developing the “messy play area” which can be found in most early years environments , and set up an activity using messy play.

We used the EYFS to show how the activities we set up can support a Childs learning and development within this chosen area. We looked at supporting children aged from 3-4 in their cognitive development and looking into the area of Literacy and Numeracy within the activity. 

This activity was chosen because:

It helps with fine motor skills, Develop social skills, hiding objects in the ‘Gloop’ can help with explorative play, Helps increase their understanding of Science and the world around them. 
 Messy play is something that can be used to teach children in a fun and creative way, for our activity we made some gloop that children are able to play and learn with. Maths and literacy are two important subjects that every child will need in life, and the EYFS has guidelines based on what the child should be learning or have learnt at different ages.
 
We felt that there is a strong link between the process involved in messy play and Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.  Piaget believed in the idea that thinking has to change to incorporate new information. Children's interpretation of the world is challenged when they take on new information and find that they now have two contradictory views of the same event.

we also looked into the Social constructivist view, which is based on the idea that children will learn and develop from social relationships. An adult would have been present to support and promote learning in group work situations. ( scaffolding )

Documentation

For our activity we used a checklist observation. We feel this is the best way to document the child’s progress as the checklist can be created to suit the areas we will be looking into. From the table the practitioner will be able to see what developmental stage the child is at linked with the EYFS
If doing this activity again we listed some other ideas which we though could work well in the messy play area:

⦁ Having words in the ‘Gloop’ instead of letter
⦁ Having two or three digit numbers as well as add and subtract signs
⦁ Have the children make the ‘Gloop’ so they can understand how it was made
⦁ Allow them to experiment by adding other materials and liquids such as water, washing up liquid, sand, mud
⦁ Add food colourings and allow them to mix them to see what colours they can make

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