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.)
- 2 cups of epsom salt
- 1 teaspoon of peppermint extract
- 4 – 7 drops of food colouring
Today Miss G and I tried making and playing with the ridiculously fun {and equally messy} substance called Oobleck. It’s made out of only 2 ingredients (or 3 if you want to add a little colour), and it isn’t quite a liquid and it isn’t really a solid… In fact, it behaves like both. 
All you need in order to make Oobleck is water and cornstarch, plus food colouring if you wish.
I like to start by adding the colouring to the water first because it’s a lot easier to stir colouring into water than into the finished Oobleck.
Plus, this way you get to watch the colouring disperse into the water, which is always kind of neat.
Start by giving your water a little stir to make sure the colouring is evenly dispersed.
Then add your cornstarch a cup at a time, stirring it into the water as you go.
When the mixture is nice and thick and you’re not able to pour off any excess water, your Oobleck is ready.
To set up a simple pomegranate play station for her, I sliced the pomegranate in half, cut a cross about an inch deep on the flat surface of one of the halves, and popped it in a big bowl of cool water for her. (Removing the seeds of a pomegranate in water is by far the best way to do it. Keeping the fruit submerged in water seems to loosen everything up a little, plus it prevents nasty pomegranate stains from occurring. )
I also set out a little tray of “tools” which included a small bowl, a teaspoon, and a large slotted spoon.
Without any direction or modelling, I asked her, “Do you want to play?” She of course let out an immediate “YES!” and jumped right in.
Right away, she began pulling apart the peel and pulp, digging out the seeds (which are actually called ‘arils’, but who says that?) by scraping her finger along the membranes, and adding them to the small yellow bowl. (Keep in mind that she has watched me do this before.)
And before long, she requested another small bowl for the “white yucky parts”. 
The other neat thing about taking apart pomegranates while they’re in water is that the seeds sink down to the bottom and the white membrane bits float to the top, making sorting the two very easy.
After she’d realized this, Grae worked on removing the white bits with her slotted spoon for quite some time, but eventually retired the spoon and went straight to using her hands.
And in the end, not only did we have a very happy {and speckled} little lady, but we also had a big bowl of pomegranate seeds just waiting to be eaten up. ☺
What I like so much about this sort of slime (besides how cool it is to play with), is that despite the fact that it looks like it can get pretty messy, it’s very easy to tidy. Because it acts more like a solid when removed from little people, dishes, and blankets, it just kind of clumps up and comes away clean. Plus, it doesn’t stain skin and it washes off of clothes and blankets without any effort. Messy play being easy to tidy? A definite win in my books.
While Miss G and I have put together and enjoyed 
In order to make the most of them, I knew I wanted Gracen to be involved in the putting the sensory jars together. I gathered up a bunch of materials while she napped and set them out as a little surprise for when she woke (we also ended up using some shampoo on a whim during the activity). Since I had the time and the paint on hand, I chose to give our jar lids a quick coat of silver spray, but it isn’t necessary.
When Grae woke up, she was excited to started. She pretty much led the way, and I just made sure we had some water and one of the thicker liquids (baby oil, cooking oil, or bubble bath) in each jar. One thing was for certain – there needed to be glitter in every jar. No exceptions there. The other thing I found interesting was that Miss G automatically colour coordinated the glitter with the coloured water (hmmm… wonder where she gets these things from??)
(The blue one is the exact same combination as this one, but with blue water and glitter.)
When Grae declared her jars done, I ran a thick strip of hot glue around the inside of each of the lids, then quickly screwed them on as tight as I could. Once they’d cooled, I tried my darndest to unscrew one of the lids, and couldn’t, so I decided they were good to go.
We were headed out into the backyard to splash in the pool, so along the sensory jars came. Gracen really liked shaking them up and watching “the sparkles dance”. 
Here’s a look at the jars just after shaking them. Photos don’t do them justice, but they’re quite mesmerizing actually… calming even, so I can see why parents who use time outs would find these to be a helpful time out ‘tool’.
Besides the homemade instruments, her xylophone, jingle bells, train whistle, rhythm sticks, egg shakers, and a couple of spoons were included.
While this wasn’t a sensory station she stayed engaged in for long periods of time, we left it out all day, music on, and she came back to it again and again, shaking or tapping her heart out for a couple of minutes at a time. 
Such fun. The colours, shapes, sizes, and zipping kept her happily busy for a good portion of the morning while I slowly worked on unpacking things.
Later in the day, as I began gathering dinner ingredients, she came across a couple of clean ice cube trays waiting to be filled and frozen on the counter. I’m not sure what inspired her, but she quickly left the kitchen and returned with her bowl of buttons and the creamer cup from her tea set. Brilliant. I don’t think I could have come up with a better ice cube tray activity on the spot if I tried. I retrieved a blanket, she spread her things out, and happily played until dinner was ready.
I may be discovering new runaway buttons around the house for the next week or two, but having an hour to cook and wash dishes while my girl happily plays independently is well worth the pick up.
