Arctic Sensory Bin

We recently created an arctic sensory bin to go along with our polar unit studies this month. We had a lot of fun creating the bin, and even more fun exploring in it. 

R is five (soon to be six!) and he still adores sensory bins. I love sensory bins because they are essentially open ended play prompts with lots of learning thrown in. 

You can see his delight at finding the arctic hare, that was cleverly camouflaged in the snow!

You can find the details about this arctic bin, as well as a few ideas for guided learning, over at the Safari Ltd. blog. 

And don't forget! You have an opportunity to win the Arctic TOOB and a few other fantastic prizes tonight (1/22/13) at the Safari Ltd. Winter Twitter party! The party starts at 9pm EST. Follow the hashtag #educationalplay and your hosts @ChildhoodBeckon and @SafariLtd. Can't wait to chat tonight!

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Cloud Dough, Moon Sand, And A Fail

Today's favorite activity was inspired by two fabulous blogs. We are still participating in the play challenges (even though I haven't blogged about them all, we've had a blast with every one of them) and today's challenge was mixing concoctions from Hands On : As We Grow. Then I was catching up on some blog reading and discovered TinkerLab's great post on cloud dough. I had been wanting to make cloud dough for the longest time and had just never got around to it. I thought it would be perfect for today, although you absolutely do not need an excuse to make that stuff!

I figured it would be fun to make both cloud dough and moon sand to compare and contrast. We started off making the cloud dough. We used 4 cups of flour and a half a cup of baby oil. R measured and mixed. He absolutely loved the stuff! He immediately started pretending his fingers were ice skaters and renamed it snow dough. I loved it too. The texture is amazing.

Then we made the moon sand, or what turned into the sand plaster. It was a horrible fail. Maybe it was because our play sand was too coarse? It was extremely hard to mix and turned into a sand plaster that hardened almost immediately into a huge block of unpleasantness. My hands were red from the mixing and R was not impressed. We still compared it though and talked about the different textures and colors. R was quick to name his favorite, even though typically he is an "I like it all " kind of child that refuses to choose a favorite on most things.

I had given up and we were having a blast with the cloud snow dough when my mind wandered back to the store bought moon sand and it's consistency. What is it that they use?!? It was similar to the cloud dough, and yet different. So we decided to do a bit more experimenting. I used the earlier recipe for moon sand, but where it called for play sand, I replaced it with flour. This is what we did:

• 3 cups corn starch
• 1.5 cups cold water
• 6 cups flour

Mix the cornstarch into the cold water until smooth(ish). Add one cup of flour and mix in. Repeat until all the flour is added to the mixture.

It is very similar to the store bought moon sand. It's not an exact replica but it made us happy. It looked similar to the cloud dough but had a different texture. We then compared and contrasted the cloud dough and the moon sand. It was neat to play with two different mixtures that looked almost identical but felt completely different. R said he really liked the moon sand, but the cloud dough was still his favorite. He was very vocal during this process and really got into comparing the mixtures. He was thoughtfully describing each aspect on his own. I loved listening to him.

We used kitchen utensils for play. He also made up stories as he explored. We had a lot of fun, and he insisted on playing longer on his own. I'm thinking we'll be playing with this again tomorrow!

So thank you ladies, for the inspiration and motivation. You helped make our day a fun one!

Have you been successful at making moon sand? Do you have a recipe that would be better than the one I improvised? I would love for you to share!

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The Great Pumpkin Fight of the Sensory

Did you notice the title? The play on words? Well, let me explain. It all started with this...

A harmless pumpkin guts sensory bin. It contains the insides of four large pumpkins. I also provided a potato masher, ice cream scoop, spatula, and measuring cups. I'd like to say that it looked inviting, but take a look at this picture..

Yes, he was a little apprehensive. This was after my messy fun pep talk. This was after I reminded him of all the times he's been nervous before, only to love the mess once he got started. I even started quoting Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs And Ham" to convince him he should try it.

So he started mashing and scooping, still not ready to get the slimy goo on his hands. Then out of nowhere, my still clean little boy said that he was ready to get in the bin. Yay!

He was having a great time squishing it between his toes, when he promptly fell because it's slimy and slippery!! This was hilarious to us both and proved to be funny even the second and sixth time.

Eventually, after sitting in the pumpkin guts and scooping and squashing some more, he was ready to get out. He was running around the yard and I put my husband up to this...

I'm sorry, but there's no pictures after this point. I wish there were because they would surely be hilarious. But I quickly realized that no one would be safe and I thought it would be best to put up the camera. I was right.

It took a few tries to actually land a hit on R, but when he did R figured he'd take revenge. And he didn't want revenge on the person throwing the pumpkin globs. He wanted revenge on the person that suggested it. Gulp.

A lot of craziness ensued. Pumpkin was hurled at anyone and everyone. People were chased, and when they were caught their pockets were filled with slime. They saved the best for me though. The instigator. That sensory bin filled with pounds and pounds of pumpkin was still mostly full when it was hoisted and dumped over my head. And, I can tell you that it was an experience I will never forget.

We all survived, but our sides were split from the laughter. It was hands down, the most fun I've had in the longest time. This will surely be a tradition that we look forward to each year.

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Valentine's Day Sensory Bin

I made R a sensory bin for Valentine's Day.  I didn't like it as much as some of the others I have done for him but he loves it.  I wanted to make it with items I already had and the only new purchase I made for this bin was the heart containers.  I bought them from the Dollar Tree and they were 10 for a dollar.  Another blogger also bought these same containers.  Biting The Hand That Feeds You uses these for the bento lunches she makes for her daughter.  I plan to use these in lunches and snacks as well, a long with a few other activities I have planned for R.

I colored rice for the base of this bin.  I used five pounds of rice, vinegar, and food coloring.  I was wanting a mixture of red, pink and white rice, but unfortunately I didn't have enough red food coloring.  I still liked how it turned out though.  It is a mixture of white rice and two different shades of pink.  I also added red glass stones, pompoms, rose petals, a TON of various beads, a heart shaped light up eraser, a Valentine's Day spinning top, the heart shaped containers, various foam shapes, curling ribbon, a red pipe cleaner, a spoon, and magnetic letters to make the "I love you."

R loves just running his hand through the rice.  He also transfers the rice into the heart containers.  He threads the beads onto the pipe cleaner. He squeezes the eraser to make it light up.  He spins the top.  He does transferring activities with the pompoms and stones as well.  Not only is this sensorial, but he also gets to practice different grasps and practical life skills.  We also hide all of the magnetic letters under the rice.  He then has to find them and we spell out "I love you" all over again.  He has played with it so much the last few days.  And when he isn't playing in it, he is talking about playing in it.

He has had sensory bins for about two years now and even when he was younger, he never really made a mess with them.  The possibility of a huge mess has always been there, of course, but we have always reminded him that he can't make a mess with it.  I trust him with his sensory bins and he is not always closely supervised when playing with them.  I also trust him with art materials and he has free access to most things.  Yesterday, however, he reminded me that he is still a child and messes will happen.  It was a wild child sort of day.  He was testing us in various ways throughout the day and I should have known it was coming.  In a way, I kind of did.  I needed to get some cleaning done and before leaving him to play I really stressed not making a mess. More so than usual.  I reminded him that he would be the one cleaning it up and asked him if he understood.  He said he did and wouldn't make a mess. 

He did.  He had started transferring the rice to other containers around his playroom.  His face was priceless when I walked back in.  Mine probably was too.  He said "I know, I know! I'll clean it upppp!"  And he did for awhile.  He grew tired of cleaning it up and did some protesting.  At one point he came out of the room and shut the door quickly.  I asked him what he was doing and he said "I'm done."  I said "ohhh, really, well that's great.  I'd like to go see.." and I started to open the door.  He stepped in front of me and said "No, no, I don't want to go look." 

"Well, I'm going to go look." 
"No, no.. not done. I'll go cleeaannn." *sigh*

I guess it was overdue.

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Winter Sensory Box

One of R's favorite activities is playing with sensory bins. He loves them! So I wanted to share the festive winter sensory bin I made him. You can make one too! I used a few craft supplies and items we had on hand from previous winters.

The "snow" is a cotton batting material that I had on hand. You could also use cotton balls, but I just used what I already had. I added blue and clear gems and some white beads to the snow.

The red house was a quick little craft I did last year as well. I cut the top off of an orange juice carton. I painted it red, added red glitter glue, and glued cotton on the roof for snow. The pour spout is the chimney.

 I bought the Santa and the little fur trees at the dollar store last year. I have pom poms randomly hidden in the snow and he uses them as ornaments for the trees. They stick to the needles of the little fake trees and stay nicely. He decorates them over and over.  I also added some toys that he already plays with.  The baby polar bear, puffin and the icy fish are all toys he plays with throughout the year. I also threw in some paper snowflakes, bells, a pine cone, some fake holly, a bow, and a little present ornament.

Last year I really wanted a reindeer for his box, but I could never find one that would be right. This year I finally remembered that you can make basically anything with pipe cleaners! I Googled "pipe cleaner reindeer craft" to get a general idea and Martha Stewart had the example. I didn't follow the instructions exactly. I'm pretty sure hers would have been grander, but I liked how mine turned out.

When R woke up, I showed him his box. He was surprised to see it and he was absolutely delighted. He kept calling it his "surprise winter wonderland" and he thanked me repeatedly. The rest of the day he kept doing little things to surprise me too.

What would you add to your winter sensory bin? Please let me know in the comments!

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Shaving Cream Snowscape!

We don't get a lot of winter weather here in Alabama so I thought I'd set up an activity to let R pretend to play in the snow. This shaving cream snowscape was even more fun than it was messy. If you could imagine!

I started off by asking R to pick out a few toys he'd like to play with in snow. While he was in the next room, I made a snowscape using shaving cream in a shallow bin.  He had no idea what I was planning.

When he came back, I think he was intrigued but a little hesitant and not fully excited. He doesn't typically like mess. He still loved this. After touching the shaving cream and getting the feel for it, we started adding in his toys. He picked out some trees, dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, a cat, and some robot bad guys.

Soon after this picture I realized that the bin on top of the table wasn't the right height for him. So he sat on top of the table and played the rest of the time. We listened to Christmas music and played in the snow. Squeels of delight were heard often.

The last picture was obviously taken in messy splendor. He was saying "messy is fuuunnnn!" I'm really glad he enjoyed it so much. In spite of his appearance, he really didn't make a big mess outside of the bin. Sometimes, when R laughs really hard, he puts his hands to his face. There were several times that he was laughing and did this without thinking. Then he'd realized what he'd done and laugh harder.

When it was time to get cleaned up, his daddy wiped the majority of the mess off of him. While he was doing that, I sprayed the shaving cream off of the bin and his toys in the bathtub. Then I ran a bubble bath for him and we played some more. The mess wasn't so bad that I wouldn't want to do this again. In fact, I'm sure we'll do this again next year. Maybe even again this winter season. It was such a big hit.

Do you have any creative uses for shaving cream?

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