This week we have revisited two of our old messy play scenes.

The farm and our pink and purple fairy world.

Esther and William had a Tuff Spot each and I created them each a separate play scene. Sometimes with twins I find this way is best. It gives them a little space to breathe and to create stories of their own. William likes to bring his trains into everything and I am certain that sometimes Esther likes a little engine free time.

This was a good set up and they played for a long time.

We revamped the original farm messy play by adding small wooden crates as paddocks and animal enclosures. We grouped different animals together. I also added lots of Weetabix that could be used as building materials on the farm. William did build some fences and walls with the cereal bricks but Esther used them as blankets and pillows to put her people to bed.

For the fairy world we added a gorgeous Happy Land Forest Fairy Tree House that we have been sent to review as part of our work on Toddler Grief and Exploring Heaven with Toddlers. Esther loves this house and plays with it all the time. The characters always include Baby Tilda and often some of her new friends in our village. It is good to hear her processing things we do and talk about in real life through her play.

Today on the farm William acted out The Feed Run from Coombe Mill. It is one of his favourite things to do at the moment. He lines up all the animals, fills the trailer with people, finds Farmer Nick with a hat(!) and off they go. Today there were horses to feed, deer to feed and pigs too. The rabbits were in their enclosure ready to be fed and watered. There was lots of fast driving of the tractor and some backwards driving too. The dumper trucks and diggers were used to move feed and crops around the farm. He really had a wonderful time and has a really good range of farm vocabulary now.

Today we talked a lot about how Baby Tilda might do things up in heaven, in the sky, like we do here on Earth. A farm did not seem right for heaven though and so we created a fairy zoo instead. To try and mirror in heaven some of the things we do here on Earth.

We talked about the colours of Baby Tilda’s world in the sky. We are certain it is mainly pink and purple, perhaps with some blue and white. I love hearing their ideas for what Tilda is doing now but I do have to be careful not to make them believe that she might come back.

Baby Tilda is never coming back.

In our fairy zoo we had all the fairies living in the tree house and on the lower floor there was a feeding room for the animals.

Esther put the ‘gold dust’ and ‘rainbow food’ into buckets, baskets and dumper trucks to collect and it and distribute it to the different animals.

The fairy tree house has a wonderful basket on a pulley system that Esther could not work on her own at first. Two weeks on and she has mastered the skill of winding the basket up and down and so can transport people and objects from floor to floor of the house. This is great for her fine motor skill development.

As is sorting the different coloured rice grains and corn pops that we used for the ground of the fairy zoo and for the animal feed. She loves feeling the different materials with her hands and her feet. I think it is quite therapeutic. Esther also loved scooping, scattering and sprinkling the coloured grains and cereal. Her language is coming on beautifully and it was wonderful when she told us that the elephant was ‘snuffling’ its food.

They use wonderful words for actions now. William often says that he is ‘scampering’ which I love. I am glad that they have such well developed language skills because it means that I can talk to them about Matilda and try to make them understand what I believe.

That their beautiful baby sister is in the sky somewhere. Beyond the clouds, among the stars. That she is looking down on us and guiding us. That she has been chosen for a better place to do the work of angels, high up in the sky and that one day we will find her.

I can not tell them all of this. I cannot tell them that we will see her again because I know that they will start to look for her around the house. What I can do is paint a picture of heaven that they can understand and for the moment that is a world of bubbles and magic, singing and gold dust, fun and games with all the baby fairies that have been taken from their families far too soon.

And this they understand and they recreate in their play, so I know that they are processing what we say.

This was a lovely messy play activity and one that has been reused, adapted and developed for a while now but only very recently have we used it to begin to explore this concept of heaven and earth.

Once all the dramatic imaginative play was finished we used the coloured rice and cereal to do some mark making. Esther in particular is getting quite good at drawing simple shapes and lines now so I like modelling for them numbers and letters. We are going to do lots of number and letter work over the summer, which of course we will share on here.

For now though if you have done any messy or sensory play at all this week I would love for you to link up and share your ideas.

I am so grateful to everyone who links up for sharing their ideas and giving me inspiration.

Next week there is going to be a theme and it is … Water Play. How do you make water play messy? How do you make it educational? How do you link it to other materials and themes? How do you do water?

Here is the linky for today x