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Last Updated on July 3, 2020 by Natalie

Messy play is so beneficial for kids, even babies! It helps foster creativity, encourage exploration, and even helps develop fine motor skills. Children are always learning and through play is how they learn best. On days I find myself getting annoyed with my children, I find a messy activity for them. It often helps everyone get to a better place. Even me!

If you’re looking for ideas for messy activities for toddlers and messy play with babies, these moms have their favorite activities that you can try with your kids!

Early Years Messy Play Ideas

Disclaimer

 

Oobleck

Kimberly from Team Cartwright

Messy play is so important for kids!  We know that children learn more by playing and experiencing than they do from just listening.  But getting messy? That is just as important.  Being messy means kids have the freedom to really dig into a project.  They can try new things without fear.  Messy play engages all the senses.  Kids are touching, smelling, hearing, seeing, and sometimes tasting.  These sensory experiences are where children learn how the world around them works.

One of my favorite messy plays is oobleck.  Even the word is fun.  Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid.  It lets kids explore the differences between solids and liquids, all with just cornstarch and water.  Create a muddy puddle, quicksand, or dancing slime all with ooblecks.

Kimberly has more awesome sensory experiences on her blog, Team Cartwright!

Cornstarch

While we also love oobleck (cornstarch mixed with water), plain old, dry cornstarch is another fun way to play. It has an entirely different texture than oobleck. You could play with cornstarch and then turn it into oobleck and demonstrate that adding a single ingredient can make something entirely different. You don’t even have to explain it, just let your kiddos explore!

We usually played with this inside, by adding a box of cornstarch to a shallow plastic bin. Babies and kids will likely end up crawling into the container (mine did) and getting cornstarch everywhere. I’d often use a large mat underneath to collect as much of the cornstarch as possible.

Playdough

Holly from Simplify Create Inspire

One of the easiest and fun messy play ideas for babies and younger children is playdough. The best thing about it is you can make your own at home, and there are loads of non toxic, edible recipes for playdough, making it completely safe!

For babies and toddlers, simply learning through experiencing the squishy texture will make for great messy play. Let them mould and shape it any way their imagination allows.

With older preschool aged children, you can use playdough as a fun learning tool. Teach colours and shapes and help your child to develop their sense of dimension and structure through modelling different things with dough. It will also help children of all ages to develop coordination and hand strength, improving their fine motor skills through play.

To add an extra twist, sprinkle on a little water and let them discovery the new slimy texture too with the added fun of water play with playdough.

Finger Painting

Ingrid from Fabulous and Fun Life

One of the best messy play ideas for babies, toddlers and children is finger painting. Most children absolutely love this fun activity. It allows children to use their imagination and create wonderful art pieces. The sensation of swirling paint onto paper with their fingers is soothing for children. It also helps develop strength in their fingers and hands. It is suitable for any age of child but for babies and young toddlers make sure you use edible paint as they have a tendency to put their fingers in their mouth. Always use washable paint to make it easy to wash off clothing. The resulting art works can be used as gift wrapping paper. My children used to be really proud to see their art wrapping presents for friends and relatives.

Edible Paint

When my daughter was a baby, she put everything in her mouth, including finger paint. So, I needed to come up with ideas for edible messy play for babies. While my toddler son could finger paint with non-edible paints, my daughter needed something edible.

I ended up making “paint” out of plain yogurt (the kind without any added sugar). Sometimes, I’d use food coloring. Often, I’d mix in mustard. Candidly, I thought she wouldn’t like the taste of mustard and yogurt. However, I was wrong. Either way, it was perfectly safe for her and she painted her high chair tray to her heart’s content. Or she ate the paint. The way to play was completely up to her!

Moon Sand

Charisty Haislip from Fire Dept. Family

With three kids in the house, messy activities are a fun way to give mom a break! One of our absolute favorite activities is this moon sand. Kids love regular sand, so moon sand, the kind that sticks together and is easy to mold, is just as fun. It’s great for times when you are stuck indoors due to the weather, and can come in many fun colors.

Messy play is so important for kids so they can sharpen those fine and gross motor skills. Give them some props to play with in the sand, and let them have their independent messy play time. There are many recipes online, but I’ve found the best results with the store bought sand.

Another fun messy activity is making and playing with Slime!

Water, Sticks, and Leaves

Diana at The Elusive Family

Messy play is pertinent to a child’s development. Messy play in nature teaches children how to interact with their environment and provides freedom and unstructured play. Using items found outdoors including dirt, leaves, water and sticks, children are able to have endless opportunities for creativity. From building forts, to mixing water and dirt, drawing with sticks, making animal houses and so many other things, these very basic items are crucial for messy outdoor play. 

We love going to parks and we also travel a lot.  My two young girls love to collect sticks and flowers and always ask to take them home, and I do end up putting a lot of it in our diaper backpack, but it’s always great to know wherever we play, we always have the most basic things to have the most fun.

Water Table and Shaving Cream

Mary Beth from A Reluctant Mom

There are more options for baby and toddler play than the toys you’ll find on the average registry list. Unstructured, messy play – think jumping in mud puddles and squishing shaving cream through fingers – is super important for sensory development. And without the restrictions of stand-alone toys, tiny imaginations can literally run wild.

Get creative (and go cheap!) when it comes to sensory play, and try using some everyday items you can find right at home. Like water… some cups… and maybe a plastic bin. Our kid is a water table freak, and yes, his “water table” consists of water in a shallow plastic storage container, with several cups and small buckets thrown in. Put it out in the yard, and he’ll splash and play and pretend for literally hours. It’s fascinating to watch. Sure, he’s soaked by the end of it… but it’s only water. Messy for him, but easy to clean for you!

Foam Play

Felicity from The Baby Vine

We love mess in our household. The messier we get, the more fun the girls have and the more they learn in the process, which has contributed to our love of messy play. Let’s face it, kids are meant to be messy, and while it can be hard to let go as a parent, there are so many great benefits that come with messy play, such as allowing your child to explore all their senses.

One of our favourite messy play activities is bubble foam. It’s great, as big kids enjoy it just as much as the babies. Perfect for a nice hot, summer’s day where you can escape outside and worry a little less about that mess. Here’s how:

Materials
4 x big bowls and/or containers (don’t worry about them being the same size!)
4 x food colouring of your choice
8 tbs dishwashing liquid (choose a gentle one)
Water

Place two tablespoons of dishwashing liquid into one of your bowls. Add a quarter cup of water and a drop of food colouring. Mix with electric beaters on high until nice and fluffy.

Repeat this for with the rest of the ingredients until all four bowls are full with four different colours.

Baby Led Weaning

Emily from Journey of Parenthood

When it comes to messy play and infants and toddlers nothing can be messier than meal time! Mealtime is a great way for kids to explore food, flavor, and texture, especially when introducing solids using Baby-Led Weaning.

Baby-Led Weaning allows for infants to enjoy foods in a natural way at their own pace. They feed themselves and have the freedom to literally play with their food. The end result is a joy for mealtime – for the whole family.

Yes, it’s messy but it’s the happiest mess you’ll ever clean up as a parent! Seeing your child learning about food in such a positive environment is incredible. Being able to sit as a family and enjoy mealtime together is amazing. When baby can feed themselves, everyone gets to eat at the same time and with baby-led weaning, everyone gets to eat the same foods too!

Allowing for messy play at mealtime benefits the baby’s pallet, creates healthy eating habits, and makes mealtime fun time for everyone.

Splashing in Puddles

Alexis from Mamma in Pearls

I’ll be honest, messy play is hard with my toddler! I think it’s important and I try to encourage it because I’ve read the research on how it helps kids to develop creativity, problem solving, and physical development which are all things I want for my daughter.

The struggle is that she loves to clean and be clean. I remember trying finger painting and she was definitely NOT a fan!

One thing that she does love is splashing in puddles, so whenever it rains I try to take her out and let her splash to her heart’s content. Usually it doesn’t last long, as soon as she realizes her clothes are wet she’s done. But I’ll keep trying and maybe one day we’ll be able to graduate from puddles to mud pies. But I’m not gonna hold my breath on that one!

Find out why Alexis wants an ordinary life for her kids.

Jello Treasure Hunt

Danielle from Piece of Cake Parenting

Messy play is so important for babies and kids! It allows them to use their imaginations and work on problem solving skills. It’s also a great way to add in sensory play with your family! One of our favorite messy play activities is creating a jello treasure hunt.

Make a batch of jello and add in several little toys into your jello mold. These can be any fun toys or themes that you want. Sometimes we’ll stick with a color theme, add in dinosaur toys, or pick a farm animals theme.

Once the jello has set, it’s time for the fun to begin! Put the jello mold in front of your baby or child and let them dig out all of the toys.

Your baby can enjoy messy play while working on problem solving skills. You will have so much fun watching your baby’s eyes light up when she realizes that there are toys to find! And she’ll have so much fun squishing her fingers in the jello, which is an amazing sensory experience for her. Afterwards, you can continue to bond with your baby during bath time.

You can mix it up with your older children and tell them to look for certain colors or specific objects to dig out. We like to make a treasure hunt sheet to check things off as your child digs them out of the jello mold.

Messy play is such a fun way for your family to bond together and I highly recommend adding a jello treasure hunt into your messy play at home!

Vinegar, Baking Soda, and Food Coloring

Julie from Waiting for Fireflies

One of my children’s favorite messy activities is color mixing using food coloring, vinegar, and baking soda. We most often set up in white plastic ice cube trays, so we can add colored vinegar to several spots and leave some open for mixing. We use plastic liquid droppers or plastic pipettes to mix liquids. My kids like to use the baking soda in different ways. Sometimes they spoon the baking soda into the vinegar, and sometimes they mix the food coloring into the baking soda first, which then creates colored eruptions and fizzing.

When they are feeling particularly messy, we use large plastic art trays and put the baking soda directly in them. They then either use sport-top water bottles we’ve filled with colored vinegar, or they add food coloring right to the baking soda and then pour on vinegar. One of their favorite experiments is to add drops of different colored food coloring to the baking soda without mixing them up, and then adding vinegar. The colors mix as they fizz and it’s different every time.

Even when you love messy play, this is still an activity where it’s good to stay close if you’re indoors. Vinegar and baking soda is a great sensory activity and my daughter loves to splash in it. It flies pretty far when splashed, which I’ve learned from experience! It’s a fun outdoor activity as well.

Gardening as Messy Play

My Mel from Mel’s Garden

When my kids were little, one of our favorite activities was playing in the garden. I didn’t just let them “help,” I gave them their own kids’ gardening tools and let them have their own plot. Mostly they would make mud with the watering can and then did in said mud with their trowel or shovel. They would get some seeds planted and everything that came up was higgledy-piggledy, but they loved their garden.

Not only was it fun, studies show that playing in the dirt is good for you. Gardening (or playing in the mud, as the case may be), is good for mental and physical health. Playing in the dirt helps build immune systems. Exposure to bacteria, often found in the garden bed, is good for kids.

Being outside is also good for kids’ minds. Green outdoor settings, including a garden, appear to reduce ADHD symptoms in children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Encourage more messy play with babies and kids!

Messy play has a lot of benefits for babies and kids. This kind of play is a great way to help kids meet sensory needs, foster creativity, and learn about the world in a hands on way. Whether it be mud play, oobleck, playing with food or any of the suggestions here, let those little scientific explorers enjoy messy play their way!

What’s your child’s favorite messy activity?

 

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