Monday 7 July 2014

Creative play (3)


So the weather is getting warmer and we've been able to be outside a lot more recently. Here are two activities we've done which I'd definitely recommend doing outside - unless you're extremely brave (or foolish! Lol)

1. Box painting

So simple and yet so fun. All you really need is a large box so wait until your next delivery from amazon/kiddicare/whoever suckers you into doing online shopping and then away you go...

What we used
- large cardboard box (the larger the better!)
- paints
- cut up sponge
- chunky crayons

The first time we tried this I think D was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of freedom (aka mess!) he was being allowed... On a sunny day I dragged the biggest box we had into the garden, squirted some paints on a tupperware lid, cut up a sponge into several pieces and put Doof and the paint tray inside the box. So simple! 

To start with D did some dainty dabbing, then he progressed to being a bit smeary with his fingers and finally he got all out swipey with the sponges :)

He painted inside the box, then climbed out and painted the flaps, and lastly he flipped the box over and painted the bottom. At one point he decided paints were not enough and tipped all his crayons into the box too so he could also do some scribbling. 

This was really fun to do as Doof was completely in charge of what he did - he did a bit of painting, ran around the garden for 5 minutes, came back and got a bit more messy etc. And it was the easiest clean up ever - the box just got thrown away!



******

2. Shaving foam sensory bin

This was a super simple version of all the bubbley/foamy sensory bins you see on Pinterest. It is literally fun in a can :)

What we used
- shaving foam (I used a "sensitive" one just to reduce any chance of a skin reaction as D is prone to eczema)
- food colouring
- assorted plastic animals/scoopers
- a tea towel

I sprayed about half a can of shaving foam into one of Doof’s sensory bins. Next to it I laid out some plastic scoops and a small plastic bowl with an assortment of animals. Then I released Doof.

The first thing he did was tip all his animals into the foam and then smoosh them all around til they were all covered in white. Even though D hasn’t really seen snow before I referred to it as snow (it just came naturally, I didn’t mean to!) and then he really enjoyed burying the animals, finding them and then burying them again. He made swirly patterns in the foam with his hands, clapped his foamy hands together and then even took a mouthful… Out of all the sensory things we have tried this is the first one which has not been edible – he has never tried to eat any of the others and I can’t believe he tried to eat this one!! Anyway after one mouthful he quickly learnt not to do that again! That is when I was very glad I had a tea towel to hand as after a quick wipe of his face/mouth he was good to carry on playing.

After a while I put a few drops of blue and pink food colouring at opposite ends of the foam and let Doof swirl it around so the colours mixed in. He got a bit cross at this point because I wouldn’t give him the whole bottle of food colouring so next time I will definitely pre-fill a plastic pipette with colouring so he can squirt that in and not get distracted by the bottle!

This was such a great simple play activity. It’s great for encouraging children to embrace messy play if they are not that keen as it is super quick and easy to set-up/clear-up and lets them get very messy very quickly! It is definitely one bin we will repeat a lot :)



******

We've also tried a few other exciting sensory activities in the last few weeks - our rainbow rice I blogged about last week and here's a sneak preview of our first try at Oobleck...
 

Full blog post coming up next week :) 

And if you missed my previous creative play posts you can find them here and here.

No comments:

Post a Comment