The babies got messy recently as they explored strawberry, raspberry and orange jelly. All the senses are used in jelly play. Trays of jelly were placed on the floor and the children looked at and played with it in any way they wanted.

Jelly is sticky and changes state easily when played with. It is fun to watch this, listen to the splats as the jelly hits the floor and trays, they smell and taste differently from another type of jelly and to squeeze, pour and spread.

The adults’ role was to observe while sitting closely by describing the babies actions to build vocabulary and develop language skills.

One of our keyworkers chose to offer this activity to the babies as she observed that one of our babies wasn’t keen on getting messy and avoided mark making with paints especially. A small amount of jelly was placed on the trays and for a while the children just looked.

Emma was the first to go over and took the spoon and started to play around with the jelly stirring it with the spoon. She was closely followed by Fionn and our child who hasn’t really joined in in messy learning activities to date. Fionn stood in between his two peers watching the jelly closely. To our surprise our usually hesitant messy player started to poke the jelly with her finger and then moved the jelly around with her hand making a slippery jelly arch on the tray.

Things got a bit sticky when the children started to use the jelly like hair gel but it all came out in the wash!

The messy jelly gave a mark making opportunity to a child who does not normally engage in this type of exploration with paints. Perhaps this is a start to a whole new art form.