Lately, Jennie has completely inspired me with her messy play blogs. She is the Queen of Messy Play and I love seeing how much her beautiful twins, Esther and William, get from it. So Jennie has inspired me (and a lot of other bloggers) to order a Tuff Spot or a cement mixing tray.
It wasn't supposed to arrive until next week but it arrived yesterday! Just in time for the launch of Jennie's Messy Play for Matilda Mae link up which started today.
I hadn't told Matt so he was slightly taken aback when a 'table top', as he thought it was, got delivered when I was out. Oops.
We have a really busy weekend this weekend but I didn't want to miss Jennie's first link up. I didn't have anything prepared or have any ideas so I just threw something together and hoped for the best.
MC absolutely adores Jake and the Neverland Pirates and she has some of the characters along with a HappyLand pirate ship so the theme was easy. TC hasn't been too well lately and now he's teething so we did the messy play while he was having his afternoon nap but I really want to include him next time.
So, what did we come up with for our first messy play?
Well, first off, I bought some instant mash. I grabbed a small tin of pasta shapes in tomato sauce from the food cupboard, mashed them all up and added some red food colouring. I put the Tuff Spot down on a blue plastic sheet which would become the 'sea' and made the Tuff Spot into an island hosting a beach and... a volcano!
I sprinkled the left over instant mash to make the beach and then we got some crackerbreads which MC added to the beach as driftwood.
She was beside herself with excitement.
It was a joy to see.
At first she was a bit reluctant to get really messy and kept trying to flick any bits that got on her hands off but in no time at all she was in the thick of it.
As well as playing pirates and finding some treasure we had lots of fun.I then sat back and watched in amazement as MC did the following:
* Dipped Cubby in the volcano
* Buried poor Cubby alive in the sand
* Made sand angels with the characters
* Wrote her name in the sand
* Ran her hands back and forth through the sand
* Picked up the sand and dropped it like snow
* Dipped Izzy in the bowl and made lava footprints on the Tuff Spot
* Made lava footprints on her leg
* Dipped Izzy in the sand to get all gloopy
* Put more lava into the volcano
* Made hand prints in the sand
* Sat and sprinkled sand on her legs
* Made patterns in the sand with the driftwood
I couldn't believe how simple it was to create and just how much joy MC got from it and now I'm asking myself why I haven't done this sooner?
I'm totally sold on messy play now and I think Matt is, even though he wasn't impressed at first he saw just how much MC got out of it.
The bonus? It was also simple to clean up.
If you are thinking of doing some messy play...my advice? Don't think. DO!
The rules of messy play? There are no rules. The only boundary is your imagination.
Susanne has written a great post with some links to ideas from herself and Jennie so you can go there and get plenty of inspiration: Messy Play for Matilda Mae: 14 Posts to Help and Inspire You!
Here's to more messy play in this house!
