ABSTRACT
Messy play is 'the kind of play that is self-chosen, experimental, often uncontained and full of sensory feedback that helps us to understand how we fit into the physical world around us'. Finding time for our own material engagements is key to supporting children's. It reminds us what it's like to experience the world as a sensory being and encounter, perhaps for the first time, the sheer joy, fascination and wonder of such self-set material engagements. When practitioners and parents join children in their investigations we send a powerful signal to children that such material engagements are not just child's play but the serious work of budding scientists, engineers, architects, adventurers or pedagogues, perhaps. The case for child-led material encounters is clear.
