Squishy Snowman Sensory Bag

Today’s advent activity card invited Miss G and I to create a squishy snowman sensory bag, so that’s just what we did.  Creating this adorable little guy is actually an idea I came up with back in October when I saw these sensory bags with slimy eyes, so I’ve been anxious waiting for quite a long time now and luckily Grae seems to share in my excitement when it comes to all things play-related.

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To get started, we pulled out our collection of craft foam and prepared a few snowman parts.  Gracen worked on the eyes, while I prepared a carrot nose and some hat pieces.  Using our cool temp glue gun, Miss G adhered our hat’s yellow ‘ribbon’ and holly, and then we set off to find a few more supplies.

Included was some clear packing tape, white glitter, silver snowflake confetti, cheap clear hair gel,  water, our foam parts, five buttons, and a zip-close sandwich bag {plus some white tempera paint we decided not to use after some initial testing}.

After taping around the three sides of our sandwich bag, I folded down the top of the bag and Miss G scooped in some clear hair gel, poured in a little bit of water, and added some glitter and confetti.  {For this part, measurements really aren’t important – just find a texture your little one enjoys.}

When she had added what she wanted to add, we zipped up the bag and she gently mushed the ‘ingredients’ together.

As soon as she started playing with the bag, she noticed that the contents felt cold, which prompted this little experiment with testing the temperature out using different body parts.

After she’d completed her temperature testing, we carefully opened the bag in order to add our foam eyes, foam nose, and 5 red buttons.  When we had them in there, we did our best to remove as much of the air as possible before zipping the bag closed once again and sealing the opening with another strip of packing tape.

Next, Grae added a big strip of glue using our glue gun to the top of the bag and we stuck the snowman’s hat on.

After giving the glue just a couple of moments to set, our snowman was ready to play with!

While she found it quite challenging at first, Grae persevered and eventually figured out what worked and what didn’t really work when trying to move the parts of his face.

And with a lot of determination, she eventually had him how she wanted him.

His sparkles looked so pretty on our white table that we decided we wanted to see what they’d look like with the sun shining through the bag.  Using a couple of big rolls of packing tape, we adhered him to a window, and Miss G played with him there for a while – moving his parts until she had them as she wanted, then squishing up the bag and starting over again.

Eventually, after lots of play with her hands, Miss G decided to explore him with her feet like the funny little thing that she is – hah!  When she was done, we popped him into the freezer for 40 minutes or so while we ate lunch, and then Grae played with her icy cold snowman sensory bag during quiet playtime.  ☺

 

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