messy play | Right from the Start

We haven’t played with ‘goop’ for a while. Usually we play with ‘goop’ in the garden so that the girls can make as much mess as they like and explore it with their whole body. Today there was an indoor ‘goop’ session at Romp so we decided to visit to see what was in store.

For those who don’t know what ‘goop’ is, it is a mixture of cornflour/cornstarch and water and makes an interesting consistency that is half solid and half liquid.

At the session today the ‘goop’ was arranged in trays with food colouring, paint brushes and sticks for mixing and scraping. The girls were in their element – messy play, scientific exploration and colour mixing all rolled into one.

I gave the girls permission to explore it with their hands, yes they had coloured hands for a while but the comments and questions were far richer once they got their hands dirty.

when you squeeze it and put a lot of pressure on, it drips.

Do you think that if it was really dry it would make a track? No it just drizzles back.

Maybe it would work if you open up a big enough area.

I love the questions that arose from the play. I’ll definitely be putting ‘goop’ in the water tray soon to see if we can work out any answers.

*(This is not a sponsored post)

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My eldest daughter has been an avid potion maker all her life. We are always finding concoctions in her bathroom and when she was young she would leave them on the windowsill of her bedroom or on the side of the bath and if you knocked them off whilst having a relaxing bath the cold would give you the shock of your life. She is now a huge Harry Potter fan, having read all of the series 4 times and her potions are taking on new meaning. Her younger sister is following in her footsteps. Now that the weather is nicer I set up a little potion station for them in the garden – they love it.

It is a great sensory play activity and science experiment, they got their hands in, testing and smelling the potions and used all kinds of things from the garden. Best of all I love how the imaginary play scenarios evolved. I suggested to my 9-year-old that she might like to make a book of potion recipes.

‘Yes’ she exclaimed excitedly, ‘ But we’ll need about 70 pages, the McClary recipe book’

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