The Messy Project!
When setting up The Messy Club and first launching our workshops in Essex we were so blissfully happy to see and hear the response from fellow messy play enthusiasts!
We had such a great response from parents, grandparents and people that bought little ones to our workshops that we really understood at a new level why it is we are so passionate about messy play!
After seeing how so many parents and children have benefited, transformed and evolved through coming to our workshops we really felt the growing desire to reach more people with our messy mission and message! And so, The Messy Project was born!
Benefits ForParent/Baby
Benefits For Parents
Benefits For Baby/Child
- Exposure and learning new ways of play
- Encourages less stress and anxiety around the mess
- Occupies their baby/child in a healthier way
- Limits/decreases screen time (babies as young as newborns are even exposed to screen time)
- Creates opportunity for a healthier, more connected relationship through play with their baby/child
- Engages and evokes the inner child within the adult which activates healing
- Seeing baby happy and learning increases good emotions within the adult
- Explores new ways of play
- Fosters curiosity and imagination
- Encourages creativity
- Healthy occupation of the mind
- Limits/decreases exposure to screen time on devices such as phone/tv/ipad
- Bonding time with parent/guardian person overseeing the play
- Allows freedom to explore
- Is an exciting tactile experience
- Develops fine motor skills
- Develops Gross motor skills
- Muscle strengthening
- Fun whilst learning
We could go on with an endless list but those are some of the core benefits for both adults and children exposed to messy sensory play.
With so many distractions and commitments in the modern day, play is something we often put on the back burner or expect children to be able to do on their own or at play group/nursery. Often we don’t think or feel its something we are also responsible for and would also greatly benefit from!
The more parents, guardians and carers that know about these benefits and understand how easy it can be to get messy at home, creating these fun sensory experiences for their babies and children means that more little ones will be receiving the benefits listed above. That can hugely impact a community in a positive way, these small beings are the future of the communities they are in. What they are exposed to matters.
By giving them a better start involving them in play that is creative, fun, and gives them freedom to explore means this is engrained in their subconscious as their young forming minds evolve and they will hold those experiences within as they go out into the world and engage more and more within society and the collective.
More than ever we need to encourage creative play to parents and young forming minds. It’s all too easy in todays world of convenience to occupy our babies and children with screens that keep them still and do all the work for them. This is actually a huge issue at present, with babies as young as 6 months becoming addicted to screen time. Speak to any modern day parent and most will confess to the over usage of iPads and baby TV.
By being overly exposed to screen time, especially as young as a baby, means we are not allowing the imagimation of that young mind to use its own canvas to create. The screen literally hypnotizes and projects images into the watching mind without it having to explore or create anything of its own. This is alarming and we do not understand the outcome of this within society as yet as we are in a new time at the forefront of its unfolding.
The Messy Club Aim
Our aim is to reach a wider community of parents and guardians by providing free pop-up workshops and at-home messy play sensory boxes.
Our mission is to introduce more parents and children to the wonderful world of messy sensory fun and encourage creative, explorative play. By introducing and educating more people on Messy Play and its benefits we are able to achieve a multitude of things
The Mission
Ok, so a little heavy on the convo there! Less talk of the problem and more talk of solutions! Here is our remedy/mission!
- To educate and introduce as many people in the community as we can to Messy Sensory Play and its benefits!
- To provide a space for parents to explore this new form of play and see how it can be done
- To provide the ability for people who haven’t got the funds for weekly workshops to enjoy and get involved in a free experience
- To provide messy sensory boxes free of charge for people to use at home with their baby during any kind of isolation period (they can get these online from our page on request)
- To deliver a fun, exciting sensory experience to babies and toddlers that attend or have a home messy box
- To show parents mess isn’t scary, it can be fun!
One of the biggest shifts we see at our weekly workshops is actually in the parents who attend. Mostly all of them at some point talk about how messy play has actually helped ease their anxieties around the mess and has loosened them up to want to control their child when they are trying to play or explore with things that can get messy. This was also my experience personally, I went from being a mum that was a little too preoccupied with clean hands, hair and clothes and forgot to ‘let them be little’ After throwing a messy play party for my girls I was sold. I saw how amazingly fun it was and how much both children and parents benefited. It had that much of an impact on me that I began instantly working on creating The Messy Club.
My way of parenting transformed, my own creativity expanded as I came up with new ways I could create fun sensory experiences at home with just the basics, like a few spoons, oats, funnels, and bowls. My girls suddenly went from crying when anything was on their hands to totally not caring and covering themselves in paint while giggling. It was such a joy to see and my motto became ‘the magic is in the mess’.
It has become our mission to share these benefits with others!
If you would like to get involved in The Messy Project or have any ideas or feedback on how we can improve or expand on this mission please get in touch, we love hearing from you!