Autumn Sensory Activity

Cornflour and lentils in a plastic tub:

They played for 40 minutes together...

We added teacups and spoons and things from their play kitchen,

made "ice creams" and drinks...

They really enjoyed exploring together.

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Real Snow Sensory Box

When it snowed, Big Seed loved playing in the garden, but then

he got too cold and had to come inside.

So we brought the snow inside for him to play with!

Here are several things he did:

We filled his sensory box with snow and put in his construction vehicles and silver stars.

 He played with wooden spoons and made ice castles out of small bowls.

He learnt how to use a large syringe and sucked up warm water and squirted it on the ice.

I think this was his favourite bit.

 He played with his Polar and Antarctic animals.

He put handfuls on snow into a ball of warm water to make mini floating icebergs.

Then he painted it with watercolours.

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Winter Sensory Box

Our theme for a while is our own Winter Wonderland:

covering Winter, Antarctica, and The Arctic.

As an introduction I made them a Winter Sensory Box.

It contains:

Polystyrene balls left over from packaging

Shredded paper snow (from Grandma's Christmas Snow Scene)

Clear and blue glass stones

Silver baubles

Blue and silver crystals

White plastic lids

String of pearls

Metal chain

Fake icicles ( tree decoration)

3 Pipe cleaners twisted into a star shape

Blue pompoms

White ribbon

White ping pong ball

Craft maize sticks

White ramekin

Toy metal ladle (Ikea)

Metal spoon

Toy ceramic jug (Ikea)

3 Toy penguins

This was made in 5 minutes from stuff around the home.

(As opposed to the Autumn Box which was planned a month in advance)

There is lots of metal and cold objects in the box to give that Wintry feel.

Little Seed got more out of it than his brother.

It was a joy to watch his expressions as he picked up the different items.

Then I passed him the different objects to transfer to a wooden bowl.

He really loved this.

Here is a simple Winter Playscene ( taken in the evening so it's a bit dark).

We used a blue playsilk, blue and white glass beads,

a wooden Iceburg stacker,

and borrowed plastic animals.

The good thing about this is that you just lift the sides of the scarf, and plonk it out of the way,

 without having to tidy up the beads.

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Rainbow Rice #2 : Mandalas & Sensory Activities

Now that I went to the effort of making all this Rainbow Rice,

I would like Big Seed to do lots of things with it.

Here are some activities:

With inspiration from Twig and Toadstool and Bodylogique

we made some Autumn Mandalas.

I cut a paper circle and blu-taked it to a plastic plate.

Big Seed wanted a rainbow and we also did a Horse Chestnut leaf

(yeah, I know, I learnt the hard way..do easy bold pictures!)

I stuck the plates onto the wall.

Then Little Seed was aching to have a go!

Give me that rice!

What is this stuff?

Oooh, nice through my fingers.

I want to chuck it on the floor....everywhere!

(End of activity!
Not one for a baby in the kitchen.
Perhaps outside when I need to dispose of it.)

I hid some plastic number tiles in the box.

Big Seed had to find them and match them up.

You can use Scrabble letter tiles, magnetic numbers/letters, 

laminated letters/words/numbers, etc.

You get the idea.

Hours of fun...and peace!

He is matching them on the lid of the box.

A Montessori activity: transferring rice from the bowl to a glass jar

with a ceramic salt spoon.

Big Seed finds this hard...all kinds of transferring and gets frustrated.

But he still likes to have a go.

Make The Most Of Your First Rainbow Rice Activity

We made Rainbow Rice and I tried to extend this as much as possible,

as you only get 1 shot at mixing the colours together.

To make: get some cheap long grain rice.

Put some in a sandwich bag ( or 2 if they are thin bags like mine), with several drops of food colouring,

and a few squirts of hand sanitizer. Make sure it says alcohol in the ingredients.

Shake and leave to dry.

First we used a big tray.

I made a big paper cone for Big Seed to play with.

He used it to put the rice on the tray; he liked the feel of it falling through his fingers.

Then he swooshed it around with his hands.

He used a funnel for the next colour.

Then we transferred the rice to a big tub.
This is the one we used for our Sand and Autumn Sensory Box.
Here he is scooping the green rice with a spoon into the box.

Now pouring with a scoop into a bowl.

His favourite!
Playing with Construction vehicles.

Click here for some Rainbow Rice activity ideas