{this post contains affiliate links}Last week, while standing in the courtyard browsing our copy of 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids {as you do}, one of my mama friends mentioned wanting to start some simple sensory play with her little lady. Lucky for us, her first birthday was coming up, which allowed us the perfect opportunity to put together a taste safe sensory play kit for her!
Cloud dough is an old favourite of ours. We started experimenting with it when Miss G was about 19 months old and she’s loved it ever since. If you’ve not played with it before, you must. It’s soft and silky and powdery, but mouldable at the same time, which is loads of fun. Pair it with some scoops, spoons, and small containers, and you’ll have some very happy kiddos.
It’s no secret that we love sensory play in our house. Like a lot. Sadly, our recent move meant saying goodbye to many of the sensory materials that had become staples in our everyday play repertoire… (What – It doesn’t make sense to ship pounds upon pounds of coloured pasta, pea gravel, packing peanuts, dried beans, and glass gems?? Hmph.) And so we begin again! This week’s mission was replacing our stash of coloured rice, and did we ever! In fact, we now have 22 pounds of vibrantly coloured rice.
Our rice-filled, Japenese-themed sensory bin was such a hit with the little girls at Gracen’s 3rd birthday party, we decided to bring it out to enjoy again today. We brought a soft blanket, parked ourselves in the shade of a big tree on the far side of the yard, and Grae snuck in the calm, quiet time she quite desperately needed in order to regroup after a couple of busy people-filled days (if you’ve yet to try it, slowly running your hands through dry, cool rice is quite therapeutic).
The last few days have been hectic. With only 5 days to pack up our entire house and prepare for our first of two upcoming moves, Brad and I have been working at full steam sorting through things, preparing boxes of items we’ll need for August, boxes that will go straight to Kuwait, and boxes that will go into storage until we return home to Canada in a few years. Sort of sadly, that leaves our little lady to play independently almost all day long most days. As a result, I’ve been pulling together all kinds of random, super simple activities with whichever everyday materials are nearby at the moment. Luckily for me, this morning as I popped on the internet for a brief moment, there was a discussion on different ways to use fresh mint going on in one of the awesome blogger networks I belong to (if you’re not already one of the 68 000 people that follow our Pinterest board, you certainly should be!) We have loads of mint growing in our backyard, so I took a bunch of the suggestions, mashed them together and created this fresh mint soup station for Miss G to explore.
To start out, I set out a big bunch of fresh mint, a pair of Gracen’s scissors, and few plastic bowls and spoons. Grae began smelling and cutting and ripping the mint and the amazing scent of fresh mint filled our house. She dished out bowls of ‘salad’ and delivered them to us as we worked.
Before long, I sensed that something would have to be added to the mix in order to keep Grae engaged in her play, so I grabbed a small container of green glitter and a jug filled with water and a couple drops of green food colouring and quietly added them to the bin. (Slowly adding elements to sensory bins as play progresses is one of my favourite tips for keeping munchkins engaged in their play.)
In no time at all, bowls of sparkly green soup were rolling out of Gracen’s fresh mint kitchen.
Looks delicious, right?
This was such a simple set-up, but Grae enjoyed it so much that I just tidied it up to make it look inviting again, and I’m leaving it out overnight for Miss G to enjoy again tomorrow. We’ll see how the mint lasts!
♥
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After making a few batches of ice cream dough this afternoon, Gracen and I set up a simple little ice cream shop in the living room. We used an old wooden apple crate for her table top and made sure the floor was protected with a large bath towel.
Then we went around the house to collect a few other items. First up – ice cream cones. Yes, the real ones… We had them on hand from her 2nd birthday party and they’d never be used otherwise, so may as well use them for some fun pretend play, right?
Of course, for customers not partial to cones, you need to have a bowl option. These silicon baking cups did the job perfectly.
Next, we gathered up some spoons and an ice cream scoop…
As well as some buttons, beads, and straw pieces for candies and candy sprinkles.
And with that, our little ice cream shop owner got to work.
There was plenty of scooping, touching, smelling, and exploring to be done.
Of course the ice cream treats rolled out of the shop one after another too. A hazelnut ice cream cone for Papa…
And a strawberry ice cream cup {with extra candy sprinkles!} for Mama.
This was such a simple set-up, but I can already tell that she’s going to get hours of fun out of it. Of course, it’s more than just fun… This little ice cream shop incorporates pretend play, a sensory experience, and creativity too.
♥
And if you love ice cream and pretend play, check out our play dough ice cream shop too!
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This afternoon Gracen and I tried out a new sensory material originally created by Jessie of Play Create Explore (if you’re a parent and haven’t checked out her blog before, you definitely should – she’s got hundreds of sensory play ideas, fun bath ideas, and tons more) and it was AWESOME.
The ingredients seem a little strange, but they work perfectly together to create a hard ice cream-looking texture. The main two ingredients are cornstarch and conditioner – yes, hair conditioner – the cheapest variety you can find. The other stuff is just food colouring and cheap imitation extracts to make it look and smell more like real ice cream.
We decided on making 3 ‘flavours’ (coconut, strawberry, and hazelnut), Gracen started us off by putting an equal amount of conditioner in 3 bowls.
Then she added our food colouring – none for coconut, red for strawberry, and a combination of red, green, and yellow for the hazelnut.
Then she added a generous pour of extract into each of the bowls…
And mixed them up.
One thing I will say is that we should have spend a little more time looking for an unscented {or at least a very lightly scented} conditioner. At $1.28, the price was certainly right, but the strong ‘fresh’ scent gave our imitation extracts a serious run for their money. Even something food scented would have been better… Next time we’ll look for something of the strawberry / coconut / mango variety.
Next up was the messy part… Mixing the cornstarch into the conditioner mixture.
After gently folding and blending the cornstarch and conditioner together, this was the end result.
Isn’t it crazy how much it looks like REAL hard ice cream?!
Here’s a close up view.
And as long as it’s handled like hard ice cream usually is (not rolled or smoothed over too much – thanks for the tip, Jessie!), it scoops perfectly – just as ice cream does. ☺
We followed Play Create Explore‘s ratios exactly, so please visit the original post here. The amounts we used for these batches, along with details on the colouring and extracts are as follows:
Coconut Ice Cream Dough
Strawberry Ice Cream Dough
Hazelnut Ice Cream Dough
Enjoy!
See how we put our ice cream dough to use in our pretend play ice cream shop.
♥
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I loved this simple variation on the usual cloud dough, and today I simplified it even further for some messy morning sensory play with the cousins. To create some “snow dough” of our own, I simply made our usual cloud/moon dough and dumped in a couple of small bottles of silvery light blue glitter. A fun way to kickstart the New Year, right?
Though I could have added more festive / wintery items (mini evergreen trees, plastic animals, snowman accessories, etc.) to the sensory bin, I just stuck to the usuals this time around… Plastic cups, bowls, spoons, and cookie cutters and the kiddos loved it.
Three of the four munchkins were very eager to join.
Let the fun begin!
The sparkles are hard to see, but if you look closely, you should be able to spot them.
Kinslee digging in.
The fourth monkey just couldn’t resist the fun.
Snow dough toes. ☺
Korbin was a master moulder.
A girl who isn’t afraid to get messy.
Snow dough smoothie, anyone?
Experimenting with snow dough snowmen…
A safer building site.
Snowballs stacked.
Ummm, Grae… What happened to your hair?
Who says the snow dough has to stay in the bin?
Mission accomplished!
This explains things.
Sparkly Snow Dough (we doubled this recipe for a group of 4 children)
Mix with your hands or a whisk until ingredients are evenly distributed. Play!
♥
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Last night, I sliced my finger open {after my very favourite ever vintage mixing bowl fell from our infamous mountain of clean, drying dishes and shattered all over the floor *sob*}. As I shuffled through our catch-all closet to retrieve the first aid kit, I stumbled upon a giant bag of forgotten about epsom salt. And that’s how this random little sensory activity began. ☺
Having used regular salt {on trays} for drawing and letter printing practice in my classroom many times before, I knew that epsom salt would be just as fun. But to amp it up a little and make it more festive, we decided to turn out plain old epsom salt into the candy cane variety with a little peppermint extract and food colouring.
Of course my little helper did most of the work.
To get started, we measured out a couple of cups of epsom salt into a zip-close bag (you could easily use a jar instead – it just requires a little more shaking power).
Then we added a spoonful of peppermint extract. And because this was the white batch, zipped up the bag tightly…
And shook it up.
We repeated the process twice more, this time adding food colouring into the mix. The end result was a tray of minty fresh, candy cane-coloured epsom salt just begging for little hands to play with it.
I gathered up a few spoons and some silicon muffin cups, and Miss G retrieved some Christmas cookie cutters.
Then she got to playing.
First up was making “pucktakes” (cupcakes according to our silly little girl).
Of course pucktakes need candies and cherries on top, so off she went to collect some buttons.
This simple little sensory station kept her happily engaged while I made dinner and washed a big load of dishes, plus our whole kitchen smelled deliciously of peppermint.
And the fun didn’t stop there… When bath time rolled around, Miss G picked her very favourite epsom salt cupcake to take along with her.
(The really neat part is that if you let the salt sit in the silicon cups overnight, they harden and become little pucks that are easily portable to and from the bathtub.)
Knowing that we were expecting a string of scorchers (for Vancouver, at least) here in the city, I prepped this sunny day activity a couple of days ago so it would be ready to go when the mood struck. All it took was a bunch of ice cube trays, a little food colouring, and some freezer space.
I know that some may wonder why on Earth I have so many shaped ice cube trays, and the only explanation I really have is – I’m a Kindergarten teacher. (They’re great for counting, sorting, AND making homemade soaps for Mother’s Day!) No, they’re not what we use on a regular basis. In fact, we have 8 regular ice cube trays in our freezer at this very moment. And while regular ice cubes would work just as well, I decided to pull out the fun ones to add some interest to our ice play.
With the ice cubes frozen and ready to go, I quickly gathered up a few kitchen goodies to accompany the ice. Some cups, a couple of spoons, and a spatula to mix, scoop, and stir with, and a jug, a squirt bottle, and spritzer {each filled with coloured water} to melt the ice and make “soup” with.
Gracen was pretty anxious to get her hands into this bin and didn’t hesitate to put her water reserves to good use.
Mmmmmm…. Soup!
With the soup ready to go, the tasting began. We did have to explain that she couldn’t put the small cubes right into her mouth, but she was more than happy to just lick the bigger cubes. Not as thrilled, was Papa, Grae’s official soup taste tester – yuuuummy!
Full of soup, it was time to climb in. Brrrrr! For being as cold as it was, she lasted a surprisingly long time in there.
With frozen feet, it was time to climb out, defrost those tootsies, and water the lawn a little…
And not long after, this is all we had left of our ice sensory bin…
Though this sensory bin doesn’t lend itself to repetitive use like most do, it’s easy to set up and so refreshing on a hot summer’s day that we’ll definitely be enjoying it again very soon. Bring on the heat!
♥
Today we gathered up some supplies, transferred the rice we dyed yesterday into a bin, and headed out into the backyard for some fun.
Gracen helped me pick out the items to add to our rainbow rice sensory bin. We kept things pretty simple today… Spoons, containers, cups, and a teapot (hmm… I wonder whose selection that was!)
First job – take everything out and get those colours mixed together!
The result? Rainbow rice!
Soooo beautiful!
Next job – filling up every single container in sight.
And then things got wild. For a while, it was raining rice, and shortly after the whole bucket tipped over, Grae still inside. The good thing was that Miss G found picking it all up and putting it back in the bin just as fun as dumping it in the first place.
♥
I’ve had dyed rice in my bank of sensory box ideas for a long while now, and since we had a giant bag of Kokuho Rose in our kitchen (the hubby’s favourite… yummy, but white rice) and our dyed pasta turned out pretty well a few days back, I figured we’d give it a go this afternoon. I knew I wanted the colours to be really vibrant, so I decided we’d use gel dyes and something a little more potent than vinegar (hence the jars this time instead of plastic bags). While searching bloggyland, I found that several people suggested using hand sanitizer in place of vinegar or rubbing alcohol. It couldn’t have been more perfect actually. While we didn’t have rubbing alcohol on hand, I did have some yummy-smelling hand sanitizer that’s just been sitting around as I’ve been working on getting my germaphob tendencies under control.
With gel dyes and fruit-scented hand sanitizer involved, I decided I’d get our project started before enlisting the help of Miss G. I collected some jars, put a couple of squeezes of sanitizer in each, and then added gel dye, toothpick and all.
With the sanitizer and dye bottles safely tucked away, I filled a big bowl with rice and invited my little lady to help with the rest of the process.
She was quite thrilled with the giant bowl of rice, so I gave her a few minutes to play with it before getting started on her first job. When good and ready, Grae added about 1 cup of rice to each jar, which turned out to be the perfect amount.
First step complete. I’m just glad you can’t see how much rice is on the floor… Next time I would probably have a wide-mouth funnel on hand just to make the pouring part a little easier / less messy.
With everything inside the jars, I sealed the jars tightly and the shaking began!
Grae and I switched off, giving each of us little breaks and the chance to watch the rice slowly become coloured and more vibrant with time.
Not going to lie… It took quite a lot of shaking. We probably could have stopped earlier, but I wanted the colours to be consistent, so we shook a little more.
This was the end result.
Do you think Grae was happy with the results?
Next, we headed out into the solarium, industrial-sized baking sheet in hand. I poured the rice out, removed the toothpicks, and got rid of a couple of little rice/dye clumps while Gracen oohed, ahhed, pointed, and smelled her newest sensory bin filler.
Just look at those colours! And the perk to using fancy shmancy sanitizer? Deliciously nectarine mint-scented rice (slightly reminiscent of high school nights plagued by cheap, 2 litre coolers, but shhh… Don’t tell Grae.) Now all we have to do is wait patiently enough to let our scented rainbow rice dry!
♥
If youre worried that your little one may put the rice in his/her mouth, try using vinegar instead of hand sanitizer. It should have similar results and will be much safer.
I’ve been wanting to get Miss G a wooden beading set for a while now, but had a little idea when passing through the pasta aisle the other day… Why not just dye some rigatoni noodles bright, fun colours like I used to do for my Kindergarten students? I love old school art projects and the macaroni necklace is just that. Old school. Not to mention that dyed noodles aren’t only good for making necklaces… They’re great for sorting, patterning, crafting, and counting too. In the past, I’ve always used a combination of liquid food colouring and rubbing alcohol, but since I wanted Grae to be able to dye the pasta with me, I decided we’d try using vinegar instead. And I’m happy to report that it turned out just fine. Plus, Gracen loved the whole process. Add that to the fact that it’s super easy and cheap, and what do you have to lose? Here’s how to make your own coloured pasta…
Add about a sixth of a large bag of rigatoni to a zip-close bag already prepped with 1 teaspoon of vinegar and about 10 drops of liquid food colouring.
Shake like crazy to evenly distribute the colour and absorb all of the moisture.
Then dump the noodles out on a baking sheet and allow to dry. (If you order your colours right, you can minimize the number of plastic bags you use. We started with yellow, then did orange in the same bag, and then did the {more orange than anything} red. I had planned to just rinse out the bag and then do the cool colours, but by that time my little monkey had really taken a liking to the shaking bit and our bag was toast. We started fresh with a new bag, and did green first, then teal, and then blue.)
By the time we’d moved on to the cool colours, I realized it was a smart plan to double bag. Good thing, because Gracen went crazy.
In the end, this is what our pasta looked like. As you can see, I got a little carried away with the vinegar when dyeing the blues, but I think they’ll be just fine. We set the out in the solarium to dry, and hopefully we’ll be able to do something fun with them tomorrow. By then, I’m fairly certain Miss G will have said, “Papta (pasta) – pretty, pretty, pretty!” and “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiyeee pretty papta” about a million times.
♥
