Nursery Rhyme Week Messy Play - A Fairy Tale Twist

Another week and another messy play for us to share with you! It was recently Nursery Rhyme week so we used this as our inspiration and mixed it up with Fairy Tales to give us our inspiration for our Messy Play and whole Babies and Beyond day!  With so many stories to choose from it was quite tough to select just two for our two tubs. After careful consideration we went with.. Drum roll please.. Goldilocks & the Three Bears and Jack & the Beanstalk. We went with these stories for several reasons, our Messy Play sessions take place in our Goldilocks' Creative Kitchen. So that one was a no brainer! As for Jack and the Beanstalk, that is one of our favourite theatre shows here at the Rainbow Factory which we have been perfecting for over a year now and all love, so it was only fair to do it justice and commemorate it in a Messy Play form (plus, magic beans was a great way to get messy!).

So, without further ado here is the how-to on this weeks Messy Play:

So, first up, the Three Bears. Now we all know this story of how a nosey little girl crept into the bears house to eat their porridge, borrow their chairs and to sleep in their bed. So we created something that was juuuust right for the little ones to get involved in. When we think of the Three Bears we always think of porridge, so what's more fun than oats? Of course, chocolate covered oats! We also wanted to bring some of the woods into the tub so we also included some herbs to add a new dimension to the messy play.

The ingredients we used were:

Oats

Cocoa Powder

Dill

Sage

Water

To make this simple, yet effective tub you simply need to add the porridge oats and mix with warm/hot water. You can choose how much water you would like to add. The more you add the sloppier it will be, or if you just add a little it will have more of a sponge-y texture. That's the tough bit done! Now just to garnish the edges with the dill and sage, to really get the aroma its best to tear the dill and to pick the sage leaves off. The little ones will love the different smells and munching on it! The final part is optional, but it was my favourite bit, you can then use the cocoa powder to sprinkle a pattern onto the oats. I created a bear and wrote '3 bears' at the top! It is a really great opportunity to show your creative flair, or if you're little ones are not so little, get them to create a design!

If you want to create a really messy tub then this is the one for you! For Jack and the Beanstalk we obviously had to opt for beans, not just any beans but magic beans. This means we have to use a variety to add lots of colour, and if we are going to do a bean based messy play of course we are going to use baked beans and their tomato sauce. It's a great excuse to get slimy and to feel all the different textures. So for this messy play, these are the ingredients we used:

Baked Beans

Garden Peas

Red Kidney Beans

Chickpeas

Butter Beans

Mixed Bean Salad

Sage

All of our beans for this messy play were tinned, so apart from the baked beans we drained all of the water and liquids that the beans were in - if you don't empty it it makes for a very... interesting... smell with all the juices. Once drained, mix all the beans together or you can create a pattern with them. We also added sage leaves to the mix because we thought they really gave the impression of beanstalk leaves, or at least how I imagine them! Now all that's left is to let them make a mess.

In the messy paint area for Nursery Rhyme week we decided to continue the Jack and the Beanstalk theme and make our very own hand print beanstalks!

This was really simple to do, put out the green paint (we used two different greens, a darker on for the leaves and a lighter one for the beanstalk itself), dip your hands in and do a couple of hand prints layered slightly on top of one another. Once you have made the beanstalk  you can add some rainbow coloured beans at the bottom by using the tips of your fingers.

It is so simple and so much fun! And don't forget to go free style and show us what nursery rhyme or fairy tale pictures you can make with your hand prints and foot prints.

If you want to send your pictures in e-mail them to: bryony@rainbowfactorykids.com and we will feature some of our favourites on this post and on our social media! Don't forget to leave a name and age.




So that's all for this messy play post! If you have any ideas or thoughts of future themes be sure to let us know and we will see what magic we can work! 

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Autumn Messy Play!

Since starting our Babies and Beyond sessions we have found them to be a massive hit, especially our messy play! So now we are showing you how you can recreate the messy play at home. You don't have to do them in the big cement mixing tubs like us, you could easily create the same effect in smaller containers (this could help reduce the mess you have to tidy up as well!). When designing the messy play I like to make sure everything is edible and can be bought from your local supermarket.

Due to having a background in psychology I have been reading up on my old developmental psychology textbooks to gain a deeper understanding of the sensory development of babies and toddlers. It is really interesting to learn about their abilities and how they change month by month - I will do a future blog about the sensory development so you can see what I mean! So when I am creating the messy play I try to make sure there are different smells, tastes, colours and textures for them to get stuck in with, I even try to incorporate sounds by using things that might crunch under their feet and bottoms. This really makes it a multi-sensory experience which is sure to enhance children's development at almost any age, even your older ones will still love getting messy.

This week we were celebrating Autumn, so here is a guide to our Autumn Messy Play!

The theme for this tub was an autumn walk, so we really wanted to recreate those crunchy leaves along with some fresh ones with a variety of smells.
To create our leafy walk, we used:

Cornflakes
Bran-Flakes

Baby Leaf Salad
Basil

Mint

Thyme

The babies absolutely loved munching on the cornflakes, bran-flakes, herbs and leaves. It gave them a chance to experience different textures and flavours along with the smells of the aromatic herbs. As soon as you got near the tub there was an infusion of basil and mint in the air. Although some of the children were a little bit unsure about standing and sitting in the cornflakes other adored being able to crunch and squash them and the sound underneath their feet. I would recommend this messy play tub for the babies to pre-school age however you could make this tub more interesting to older children by hiding small treasures in the cornflakes - maybe small squares of shiny paper which are jewels, or even collect some conkers and acorns to find. This could even be turned into a motor skill activity by trying to separate the bran-flakes from the cornflakes. Use your imagination to really bring it to life.

For the second tub I wanted to create a muddy experience, as we all know how rainy it gets in autumn! This one creates a lovely chocolate-y smell and the babies seem to love eating it! To make our edible mud, we used:

Cocoa Powder

Plain Flour

Vegetable Oil (Sunflower will work fine!)

Oats

Cornflour

Water

This one takes a little bit more work than the last, however it is worth it! First you need to mix the flour and cocoa powder. Once mixed together we need to mix in the oil. Do this a bit at a time and it is best to mix it with your hands, so maybe even get your little ones involved here as this is where the messy fun begins! You will roughly be using 1 cup of oil to 5 cups of flour, however just keep mixing slowly until you get a mixture that has the same consistency as kinetic sand, i.e. it will stay in a shape you squash it into but isn't too sticky. You may need to rub it together to evenly distribute the oil. Now you have your chocolate kinetic sand mixture you need to add the oats! Mix them all in to add to the texture. As the kinetic sand is quite dry, we wanted to add a gloopy mud element and for this we used cornflour and water! We mixed it in the middle of the chocolate sand mixture so some of the chocolate would mix in and add to the colour. Slowly add the water to the cornflour and you will find it gets quite tough to mix, slowly add more water until you get a mixture that moves like a liquid when left alone but acts like a solid when handled. There you have it, our edible mud! Again you can make this more advanced for your older children by adding thing like gummy worms for them to find in the mud. The cornflour and water is also a great science based activity for them to make and play with, it makes a great opportunity to teach them about non-Newtonian liquids (Liquids that act differently than normal liquids).

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Our New Theme - Heroes and Villains

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