- Here's the deal.
Sensory exploration,
explore with our hands, getting messy,
feeling things, exploring and learning about the world
and discovering through our touch,
tactile senses is crucial for children's development.
And not only is it crucial for their development,
it's also very soothing and therapeutic for them.
And often this type of play
keeps them engaged for long periods of time.
Have you ever seen a toddler in a bubble bath?
Just playing maybe for hours with the bubbles?
That's the type of thing I'm talking about here.
It's liberating for us parents,
'cause you can sit right next to them with your laptop
and you know they are busy doing something
that's good for that development.
And by the way, this is true for children of almost any age,
and even for adults.
Playing with a block of clay, with playdough,
with pasta, with beans, with rice,
with jelly beads, with sand, with mud.
These are the types of things
that are going to keep our children engaged for a long time.
And you add in a few figures or animals or a car and boom,
you've got yourself two hours to do work.
Well, don't hold me to the two hours.
It's not about measuring the time,
but a long time of deep play.
So today I want you to set up your messy zone
and here's the deal.
I know mess is triggering for most of us.
Mess is hard for us to handle.
And now especially,
when our kids are never out of the house,
when we don't have any help,
when we can't get a moment to clean up,
we're just constantly in a cleanup treadmill, right?
This rat race of cleaning up, cleaning up,
making mess, cleaning up.
I get it.
I really do.
But we've got to surrender to it a little bit
and we've got to use the fact that
children like to get messy,
to keep them engaged and to give them what they need.
So my absolute best tip
for a messy zone is any kind of tray.
I like to use the OT tray,
which is a huge tray that goes under washing machines
because the bigger the tray and the higher the walls,
the more containment there is for mess, right?
We can put a whole sandpit basically in there.
And then sand sandpit
and yes it gets out of the tray
and yes we'll have to clean up, but that's okay.
We have to just make friends with
and surrender to the seasonal changes,
well each day of mess, clean up,
mess, clean up.
It's a cycle that we all continuously going through.
Another tip that you could do is
bring the mess into the bathtub or the shower.
If you have something like paint,
you could put it in there with shaving cream
or with bubbles or with, you know,
water colors or with the food dye
and allow your child to paint the side of the walls.
Use something that is easily gonna be cleaned,
like your kitchen sink,
your bathroom sink, your bath tub itself.
So my goal for you today is to explore some messy plan.
Hopefully to set up a little bit of a messy zone.
You might want to put a plastic sheet out
or just a bed sheet that you don't mind about on the floor.
You might wanna put a big tray there
and put some messy materials
that you allow them to make a mess with.
And when they start throwing it all over the place,
teach them no sweetheart,
that stays inside.
It's fun to throw but we've got keep it in the tray.
And that's the only way that we get to play with it.
Otherwise we've got to put it away
if we can't play with it cleanly.
And just helping them learn that
there are boundaries to messy play,
but also there's a lot of fun to be had
within those boundaries.
So, my challenge to you today
is to engage in some messy play and set up a messy zone.
Where can you go every day for a little bit of messy play?
Is it your bath?
Is it the kitchen table?
Is it the kitchen counter?
Where can you put a tray or a baking pan?
And allow your kids to get messy
and get dirty and get those hands exploring.
Take some pictures of this beautiful exploration.
Share it out with us,
tag me and use the #PlayPandemic.
Don't forget, we've got really cool prizes.
We've got a really fun competition running
and this is a challenge that we're trying to do
as a community,
as all these people across the globe
who are experiencing the real pandemic
and side by side with that,
we are counter attacking it with the play pandemic,
'cause we're gonna meet all of the tragedy
and the pain and the loss,
with passion and joy and connection.
We're gonna up, you know,
we're gonna balance it out.
We've gonna meet it with a resolve
to really be the creators
and the CEOs of our family
and make conscious choices within the circumstances we're in
about how we wanna experience our day.
So share those out with me. I can't wait to see.
(upbeat music)