"Messy play" - why??

[warbler]

DD (1 year) has just started nursery and every week they do some different "messy play". This week it's a pile of whipped cream on the table for them to play with. DD is apparently 'a bit unsure' about it (no surprise to me - hates her hands being dirty) and although the nursery was just observing rather than being critical, they told me that some children love getting their hands into it and then licking their fingers.
I'm genuinely interested at the point of this from a developmental view (eg should I be encouraging DD to explore things like this more?) - it's just that I'm struggling with the knock on effect to other things - in the overall scheme of things, there'll be many more occasions that I'd rather she didn't rub her hands in something and then lick her fingers (eg if she'd been sick - or worse!!) so overall how is the messy play helping her??

DC love to squish things through their fingers, learning about different textures

www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/eyfs/resources/downloads/4_3_c.pdf

HTH

I'm not a pre-school teacher - and I'm sure someone more knowledgable will be along in a bit - but I think messy play is a fantastic, fun and educational thing for young children to do. Playing with water, sand, play doh, paint, any sort of gooey stuff (!?) teaches them about texture and how things feel in their hands, about manipulating matter with their hands (fine motor skills), and about relaxing and getting stuck into an activity without worrying about 'getting in on their clothes' or 'on the carpet' etc (e.g. It's liberating!). I'm not sure about licking stuff off your fingers? I suppose if they all have their own little bowl of cream or cookie dough or whatever it's fine, hygeine wise.

messy play is great for dc to learn different textures and relax around things like that

the problem is you dont like her to have messy fingers which i beleive can cause some behaviours when eating certain food

young children can get a phobia of eating any sloppy food

they always say when feeding sloppy food keep the wet wipes away less likely to end up with eatng problems

why worry about putting hands in things if she'd been sick you would clear it away and she'd be distressed from being sick not likely to play with it

it's all part of learning it helps dc relax and express them selves also helps with speech also

my ds expresses himself more doing things like this ansd salt said all dc do

you need to relax more about having her get messy its all structured and monitored so let her be messy it cleans up easily and she'll be having so much fun

Thanks HC - really useful explanation.
Bubblagirl - I don't want to come over all defensive, but I don't have a problem with her getting her hands dirty - eg we've been doing finger painting for some months - I was just genuinely interested as to why it was a good thing to encourage DD to see a pile of something (in this case whipped cream) and smear it round the table, onto her face and into her mouth. Recently, she has done this a couple of times when she's been a bit sick on the floor (not being distressed as more of a 'wet burp' than full scale). The article that explains the 'science' behind it does actually mention that using food is 'controversial'

dd3 (21 months) hates messy play and has always refused to take part (jelly, foam etc at nursery)

she is happy playing with water and sand though

2 of my children hated this kind of thing right through to reception. Some of the others weren't too keen but did it because they were told to. With one of them I was taken to one side and it was suggested that he might have 'problems' as he refused to join in when they were doing hand paintings. No problems at all, he just didn't like getting his hands dirty.
And it wasn't that I didn't want them to get their hands dirty. They were quite happy to play in sand or digging holes in dirt .

yes dd3 doesnt like getting her hands dirty

unless its spag bol or muddy puddles