Mess Time

Which child doesn’t like making a mess? I don’t know too many myself!

Children love to make a mess and that’s completely okay! The most important part is that they clean up their mess after. It teaches them how to be responsible for their toys. When playing in the gym with the children, the occasional time I will take out the toys out of our storage room and have the children scatter them around the gym. Before doing so I make sure to explain to them that we need to respect our toys and treat them with care still by gently settling them throughout the gym. Once they have completed this I come up with an example of how oh my I think a tornado or hurricane of children came and went through the gym! They absolutely love this hearing that they were the cause of the gym becoming messy. How do I get them encouraged to clean up a mess they just made?

I turn it into a time game where I explain to them it’s now time to clean-up the mess we just made but we’re going to see how fast we can do it in. They’re always so eager to see how fast they can be in doing so! I help them by standing in the storage room where they bring the toys back to me and I have to be as fast putting them away as they are bringing them to me and we work as a team. By the end we see how fast we were in cleaning up the tornado or hurricane that rolled through the gym!

What does this accomplish? Firstly, the children get to do one of their favourite things and that’s making a mess which is fun for them! Secondly, it teaches them about still respecting their toys and how they have to gentle with them. Thirdly it builds on their team work skills in reaching the common goal of getting the gym cleaned as fast as possible. Finally they just have fun with it! You can have your child do the same thing with their toys and help them doing so by following along the lines of what I’ve done in the past with this activity in our gym! Go and have fun!