Month: May 2020

It’s like the first day of school all over again! Or at least it is likely to be for the kids. Victoria’s Foundation – Year 2 children return to the classroom next week having spent almost the same amount of time in remote learning as they have at school in 2020. For parents it might feel like you are sending them to somewhere they have been before. For the kids it may feel like they are starting again for the first time. They are not returning to the classroom after a few weeks of holiday break but going back, in many ways, to begin again.

Meeting their teachers.
Establishing relationships with peers
Learning the routines of the class and school

It is a great idea right now to imagine this transition as if you were sending your children off to school for the first time. Some are excited, some unsure, some nervous and most a bit of each. Just like getting children ready to start school in the first year there are things we can do to help them to feel prepared and settle in quickly.

1. Talk About Emotions

The return to school will not just be a practical transition but may be an emotional one as well. Let kids know that they might have mixed emotions going back to school and that this is totally okay. Asking them about their emotions gives you an opportunity to explore their perspective. Some kids will share their emotions willingly while others might need a bit of a prompt.

An activity, for opening conversation about all of the emotions that we can hold onto in a situation, is called:

Colour My Heart

(This activity can be found in a range of places but here I will reference it to the therapist Paris Goodyear-Brown who provides a directive on this activity in her book “Digging for Buried Treasure.)

For this activity you will need a piece of paper and some coloured pencils.

Get the child to draw either a picture of a heart, or maybe of the school if hearts just aren’t their thing.
Explain that they are going to colour in the picture with the colours of emotions that they are feeling when they think of the return to school. Help them to name the emotions and choose a colour to represent each one. Let them do this as one child may represent sad with blue while another, whose favourite colour is blue, might choose that colour for happy.
Once they have decided on their emotions and colours get them to colour in the picture. They should use each colour to show the amount emotion they are feeling. e. one child might choose to draw just a stripe of nervousness while another might fill up half the picture in this colour.

If they have trouble getting started, explore some of the following possibilities:

Excited ecstatic, happy, glad, angry, mad, sad, upset, worried, anxious, nervous, disappointed, confused, joyous, curious, grateful, pleased, unsure, delighted, annoyed, frightened, lonely.

This activity allows children to consider what they are feeling and opens up the opportunity for conversation. It might also be a great way to check back in with them after a week with school to see if their “heart “has changed or stayed the same.

2. Provide Pre-Warming of What School Will Be Like

The unknown can be a real stressor for our brains. So, as it gets closer to school reopening do your best to make the unknown known. Start discussing the return with your kids. Discuss the facts of what school may look like and what rules may be in place.

What things may have changed?

Parents not being allowed in the school at drop off and pick up times
Whether they have the same teachers
Whether they will do all subjects or lessons
Classroom layout and how the desks are organised
More hand washing breaks
Less people outside at the times they play

Also discuss the things that may have stayed the same:

The expectation they will get their uniform on in the morning
Being in the same classroom with kids they have met
Being picked-up at the end of the day or going to afterschool care.

Rather than trying to have one big conversation about the return to school try having many little ones. Add a mention of the school return to each day as you count down to your child’s return. This will give children the best opportunity to consider how they are feeling about the school return and generate any questions that might be bothering them.

3. Involve Kids in Pre-Planning

Just like at the start of school there was uniform buying and organising, consider what tasks you can do over the next few days to have children involved in their return to school. Checking uniforms are washed and ready, making some school lunchbox snacks together or buying a new pack of pencils can all make the return seem special. These tasks can help empower the child and give them a role to play in their return to school.

4. Focus on Connections – Not Schoolwork

Learning might be on everyone’s minds but the fastest way to learning is to re-establish connections with friends and teachers. The brain feels more comfortable, and ready for learning, when it knows others are there to provide safety, support and understanding. If you can, consider fitting in a quick playdate with a friend from their school-class.

For many children excitement over the return to school may be overshadowed by continued feelings of stress and nervousness about the pandemic. If your child shows signs of stress that are affecting their daily life longer than a month after the return to school, consider seeking professional assistance from a mental health professional such as a play therapist.

I remember one of my first maternal health mothers group sessions when my son was born. I remember a whole group of new mothers nodding and agreeing with each other that they were not fans of messy play. They agreed that they didn’t like paint, or playdough, sand or trays of coloured pasta. The set-up, the play the resulting clean-up, they were not fans of it at all. I remember one mother declaring that Messy play was something that children could do at childcare.

While the thought of cleaning up messy play activities could make any parent groan the benefits for children’s brains is astronomical. And while many online articles tout the importance of this type of play for pre-schoolers, the importance of messy play continues into and past childhood.

Messy Play Defined

Messy play, a term often used interchangeably with sensory play, is any activity that engages (and potentially challenges) a sensory system. It is play that is hard to conduct while sitting still or without a range of materials to explore. Messy play might involved:

Visual elements such as multiple colours, shapes and patterns
Noises of different frequencies and volumes
Textures that vary such as slimy, smooth, rough, hot, cold, crumbly or spongy
Smells, natural, food related, familiar and new
Tastes such as sweet, sour, hot, spicy and salty
Feeling things that push, pull and apply pressure to our bodies
Body movements that swing, slide, rock and spin
Reflection on what is going on inside us during an activity, our breathing, heart-rate and feelings in our tummy to name a few

It is worth noting here that when many people think of the senses they think of five that are traditionally talked about in school; vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Increasingly it is more accepted that we have at least eight senses. The traditional five plus proprioception, vestibular sense and interoception. These last three have a lot to do with the data received from the physical body.

Proprioception provides body awareness and data about movement and coordination,
Vestibular sense about balance and our place in space, while,
Interoception is the data our brain receives about our internal body systems.

In messy, or sensory play, one or more of these sensory systems is activated and asked to engage in the world around us. Each opportunity for our sensory system to activate is an opportunity to develop children’s brains.

Messy Play and Brain Development

In all tasks in our lives, our brains need to take in sensory data, decide which sensory data is important,, focus us in on important data, filter out less important data all pretty instantaneously. Our brains are mega computers for responding to the sensory information in our world. Problem is, our brains have stayed much the same for centuries but our sensory world has changed.

People’s brains currently have to deal with higher rates of sensory input than ever before. They are expected to process more, and to know what to focus on and what to filter out.

Brains weren’t designed to do this in our modern environment. Trying to, can leave people having difficulty processing sensory data successfully and feeling sensory overwhelm.

Messy Play Experiences Equals A Stronger Brain

Children’s brains are trained through sensory experiences. The more exposure to sensory experiences the more chance their brains have to wire themselves to cope with the sensory demands of their environment. Yep, messy play can help train their brain! Brains can learn to take in and work with sensory data more effectively through exposure in play.

Messy play can help:

Create strong sensory pathways in the brain
Develop proper sensory processing capabilities
Refines sensory thresholds (how much sensory data we can cope with)
Shape what sensory information is seen as positive and safe to the brain
Strengthen awareness of the physical body and how it can interact in the environment
Improve the connection between body and brain

How to Find Your Zen With Messy Play

Knowing it is important does not necessarily mean all parents should be expected to go out and buy tubs and tubs of paint tomorrow. But, hopefully it is a good reason to continue thinking about what strategies could be used to make messy play tolerable for you and available to your kids. Consider some of the following factors, for doing messy play, that could help make the experience more comfortable for you as a parent.

Find a type of messy play that feels comfortable for you

Are there types of messy play that you are more or less comfortable with? i.e. paint, sand, water, slime, playdough? Play that is done in one area? Or play that requires a lot of movement? Quieter pursuits or is noise okay? Start by offering the experiences you are most comfortable with.

Choose the right equipment for your comfort level

Consider if something you don’t like could be adapted so that you are ok with it i.e. you might not like containers of paint with paint brushes but would you be happy for your child/children to use watercolours? Or paint sticks? For anyone who has not seen these they look a bit like a glue stick but are a paint.

Find a comfortable space

Consider where the play will take place. Does this change how willing you are? Is inside at the table okay? Or outside, or in a garage?

Contain Messiness

Are you happy to use resources you have for creating sensory play activities or do you feel you need to buy things specifically for the activities? You could keep a messy play box where all the things you need for messy play can be stored and packed away.

Consider the time before messy play begins. Is there preparation that must be done before messy play can be started i.e. putting a special mat down, having a bucket full of water available for washing hands immediately?

(I am a big advocate of this one. I always try to Plan the pack-up before I begin. )

As you become more confident and comfortable with your own messy play activities it may inspire you to help your kids explore the full range of sensory activities that are out there. You will be able to do this knowing just how much their brains will thank you for it.

If you get excited about messy play and then find your child just does not like it, get curious about that. We all have likes and dislikes but if you feel their aversion to sensory experiences is beginning to impact their daily lives professionals such as Occupational Therapists can assist. Occupational therapists are trained to assess sensory profiles and help crate sensory interventions that would specifically target your child’s needs. At times it can be useful for the child to also seek out the help of a play therapist who can assist them with the emotional side of living with sensory challenges as well.

What is your favourite messy play experience? Let us know in the comments.

Are Your Kids Ready to Go Back?