We love messy play!  It's so great for the kids to be able to explore different materials and learn through their play.  I'm actually not too keen on the aftermath, but I know that they benefit so much from it so we do a lot of messy play.  So of course I was excited when we were offered a splashmat from Messy Me to try out and do some messy play on.

It is a lovely big mat made of oilcloth and works on a table as well as on the floor.  I chose the olive grey mat with a star pattern as it is quite neutral and wouldn't take away from the bright colours of our activities.  The mat is really nice and I've decided to use it mostly on the floor to give us lots of space to play and give the kids freedom of movement.  I've also decided not to use paint on it as oilcloth can get stained, and it really is too lovely to stain, so we'll be using wipe clean materials only.

It's great for putting out on the floor with lots of paper and crayons and an assortment of other creative materials.  The kids love stickers so we've always got those around and as the mat is so nice and smooth it's great for pattern rubbing boards as well.


We've also used the mat for play dough that we were making dinosaur footprints in.  It's great when you've got a few kids over for a play date and don't have a table space big enough, I just put it out on the floor, gave each of the children a ball of play dough and some dinosaurs and they all kept busy and all of the play dough stayed on the mat.  Such easy set up and clean up, perfect for busy groups of kids.


It's also great as a base for sensory bins and other sensory play.  Ivy does tend to make a bit of a mess with beans or rice getting all over the place when she plays, but of course I don't want to discourage her from exploring.  So by putting out the mat we keep the mess more contained and I can just pick it up at the end and pour all of the beans back into the sensory bin.


We are really loving our Messy Me splashmat, it makes it so easy to set up activities on the floor for the kids to do and to keep their mess more contained.  I'm sure you'll see it in a lot of our messy play photos from now on!

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* This is a review post, we were given a Messy Me Splashmat to use and write our honest opinions about.*