Yesterday I made cloud dough with my two year old son. It’s a recipe that’s been floating around Pinterest and I’ve wanted to try it out for a while. C and I started molding the dough into “snowballs” and quickly moved up to cupcakes. C loved the dough and played for almost an hour, an incredibly long time by two year old standards. Hand prints segued into foot prints and C eventually ended up, without pants sitting in the bin of cloud dough. He even experimented with a few head prints.
It was a mess. C loved every second of it. Now I know about the benefits of sensory play for young children. As a preschool teacher, I used a sensory table daily in my classroom of three year old children. Sensory play helps build fine motor skills, laying the foundation for pre-writing skills.
But prior to working at Make-A-Messterpiece, I don’t think I would have allowed C to get as messy as he did. Sad to say, I probably would have stopped him after he made his first foot prints. Because, at that time I didn’t know how important it is to make messes. C wasn’t only making a mess, he was exploring and questioning his environment.
Seeing how much fun C had, I was inspired to help a few of our messmasters make five extra large tubs of cloud dough for the Splat’tacular Art tables. I stayed for a while and played with a few children who were exploring this concoction for the first time. They seemed to be having as much fun as C and I did!
Happy Mess-Making!
Cynthia
