It is Saturday night and I am not doing well.

Tomorrow Tilda will have been gone for four months.

Tomorrow Tilda should be 13 months old.

The cruelty of dates and numbers strikes the very heart of me every month.

Every Saturday night I dread.

I hate.

Tonight I am a mess because I cannot remember Baby Tilda’s smell.

And I am worried, terrified, afraid of what else I am going to forget.

I cannot bear to forget.

I want

I need

To remember my beautiful baby girl.

I don’t just want to recognise her in photos

I want to remember everything about her

Every tiny detail of my wonderful little daughter.

To help with that we do everything we can in her memory

To make her proud

Today we did some messy play

Just before bedtime and thankfully bath time

All four of us together

Did some messy play

We made some messy marks

And this is what we did.

I wanted to use dry ingredients for mark making but I wanted them to change with water to add a different element to our play. And because I know my children and what they like I wanted to make it properly messy.

I knew before we began that no matter how small the container of mess at least one child would want to get in it!!

I decided to give each toddler a roasting tray filled with casting sugar, Dream Topping powder and glittery sugar.

A sweet edible mix that would be exciting to explore both wet and dry.

The ingredients are cheap and easy to find and the activity has endless possibilities.

Everyone of any age can have a go at making a mark.

Our marks began with mixing the ingredients together to make our mark making mix!

We used a paintbrush to mix the different powders together.

At the beginning Esther and William made lots of circles and curved lines as they stirred the mixture together. I then presented them with a selection of tools to choose from and explore making different marks.

Esther really liked trying out different brushes while William became quite attached to a roller.

This week I chose mark making as a theme for our messy play because it is important to allow children the opportunities and tools needed to try out making marks. Not necessarily because at two years old I expect my children to start writing but because I know that their journey to written communication needs to begin somewhere. And why not as part of the messy play that we love?

Sometimes marks are made for the pure physical enjoyment of the activity – the feel of the felt-tip pen as
it glides over the surface of the whiteboard or the chalk as it grates over the bumpy tarmac, the sight of
the brightly-coloured dribbles of paint as they run down the paper on the easel, or the sensation of the
glue, oozing between children’s fingers as they spread it over the paper. On these occasions children have
no interest in an end product at all; the physical activity is an end in itself and an opportunity for them to
experiment and explore with their senses, developing confidence and dexterity through the process.

With our sweet and dreamy mixture Esther and William were able to enjoy a total sensory experience, feeling the powder between their fingers, tasting the sugary substances and smelling the sweetness too.

To begin with we all joined together in some random, abstract mark making. It was actually a lovely way to spend some quality time together at the end of a busy day and have some quiet, focused fun.

After making and talking about different brush strokes I started to draw different kinds of lines and letters and shapes. Esther and William are quite good with letters and recognise M, W and E. They also know the first initial of all the characters in Thomas their favourite being B for Bertie the Bus.

When William was trying to copy the letters I wrote he decided to turn his paintbrush round and use the wooden handle end to give him a finer line. I thought this was quite a canny idea and I think he did too. It meant that he made a cleaner, clearer line and so we could see what he was trying to write or drawer.

Watching Esther and William play today made me realise how important giving them the time and space and materials to make marks really is.

Through their marks, they are communicating their ideas, expressing their
feelings, developing their imagination and creativity, and testing their hypotheses about the world. These
opportunities for making ‘thinking visible’ are fundamental to children’s learning and development and
should be the entitlement of every child.

I spent some time drawing shapes for William and then turning the shapes into pictures. Circles became wheels going round and round, we made engines, tractors, trailers and carriages. We used a square and a triangle to create the basic outline of a house.

Sometimes the toddlers were making the marks and often times I was, modelling how it can be done, and talking, always talking about what I was drawing and writing, talking about how and why.

William asked me to draw lots of things for him. We drew the Gruffalo together talking about the shapes we could use to make his body and what special features he needed to have. Inspired by the Gruffalo circles became nuts and we used zig zaggy lines as a log pile house.

I tried my best to draw a tractor as directed by William. With a big wheel at the back, a small wheel at the front, a window and Farmer Nick in the driving seat!

William loved the tractor and together we came up with the idea of using the painting roller with the tractor drawing to pretend to be a steam roller. He thought this was great fun!

Soon enough the tractors became trains and we started talking about Thomas. This gave us an opportunity to think about numbers and to try making some in the glittery sweet powder. Thomas is great for learning numbers, letter names and letter sounds.

When I sensed that the mark making activity might be coming to an end. I asked Esther and William if they would like to get messy.

They both of course said yes and I got them each a small beaker of water to add to their mix.

It made sticky sweet sugary gloop.

A wonderful new substance to experience and explore!

As the powder and the water mixed together the dream topping started to form, a gloopy substance a bit like Angel Delight.

Esther and William were keen now to discard their tools and use their fingers.

They had used their hands with the dry powder too so it was lovely to see them finding the contrast and discussing how different the new material we had made felt.

The texture was very different and the mixture was now wet. You could see them both considering this as they continued to play.

Even Daddy felt the need to join in and get mucky.

It was Daddy too that started the tasting of the mix!!

After a sugar fix we got back to our drawing and found that the new wet sticky mixture was just as good if not better to make marks in than the dry. We drew shapes and lines and trains again. Many many tractors and trains!

But it was not long before the question I knew was coming came.

From our son.

Can I get in? Can I feel it with my feet? Can I take my joggers off and get in?

And before we could answer …

… he was in! Making prints and marks with his toes.

Esther was not so keen deciding to stay out of the tray and playing from the side.

But William threw his whole self in, much like the Hokey Cokey, then he grabbed his roller and he was away.

Dripping and squelching, sticking and slipping, and having a thoroughly marvellous time.

After some wonderful moments watching Esther and William play in their own little worlds in their non stick roasting trays!

It was time to clean up and wash up before tea.

We had a lovely afternoon making messy marks for Matilda Mae.

Have you done any messy or sensory play this week?

If you have we would love to hear about it.

Please link up using the linky below and we will look forward to reading, sharing and trying your ideas.

In memory of our beautiful Matilda Mae.

Thank you x