Ice Balls

Further on from yesterday's post I made ice balls. I filled balloons with water and froze overnight. They worked great! Little hands explored the cold ice and we we added water and watched them melt. They enjoyed trying to pick up the treasure inside. 

Highly recommend for these warm weather days to cool down! 

Ice Eggs

Today I filled two balloons up with water and added a few blueberries for Monnie to discover inside. 

I froze the balloon balls for a few hours (as a bit of an experiment so they would be hard on outside but soft in middle, like an egg). Monnie then played with the balloon balls and was able to pop them, giving her a surprise of ice cold water and blueberries inside to reveal the egg. She quickly scooped up each blueberry to eat and then played with the ice egg until we turned the game into water play adding more water and toys. I'm going to try this again and let the balls freeze overnight for a slower melt but the element of surprise made it fun today! 

Ice Search

We started by adding ice to the bowl, then milk bottle tops, some large wooden beads and pegs. Our toddler stirred the items to make a soup, then it turned into a game with our 5yr old. We asked questions like, "can you find the blue bead?" The coldness of the ice made it a fun surprising sensation as she searched for the item. Our toddler continued to put her hands in and look for items too. We would then talk about the colour, shape and size of item before having another turn. 

This activity helps to develop fine motor skills and teach shapes and colours. It also entertained us on a rainy morning!

Coloured Rice Play

It's a rainy Friday so we are making coloured rice! Distribute rice into small snap lock bags, add 1tsp white vinegar & choice of food colouring to each bag, snap lock and let little hands help to mix the rice and colour for the start of a sensory experience. 

We are now waiting for the rice to dry on newspaper to play with it later today! 

After a couple of hours, the rice is dry and ready:

Posting Play

We used several different size shapes (milk bottle tops, pasta shapes and lids), we then posted into different size containers. This activity assists with brain development through cross patterning and transferring of objects, and through learning about size and space. Music was made as objects were tipped out and shaked. As the objects were picked up and dropped the fine muscles of the fingers developed and the little mind was entertained! 

Feathers - a cleaner messy play!

You can find colourful feathers at your local craft/sewing type shop and with the furry tickly texture these are a fantastic sensory experience for little hands. 

We used different containers to put (and tip out) them in, we blew kisses off our hands with the feathers, covered different body parts in feathers and Monnie generally carried them around with her while playing. As feathers fall they move slowly so excellent for developing eye tracking skills and as little hands pick the feathers up fine motor skills are developing, so essentially feathers help build the foundations for reading and writing!

Snow!

We are coming into a NZ summer, but the otherside of the world is coming into winter, so you can use this activity to teach what the snow might be like in all those Christmas Carols! 

Pour baking soda into a tray, add shaving cream slowly as you mix the two ingredients together (I made up ratio but probably used about 200g baking soda to 1/4 cup shaving cream). Check consistency to be crumbly and "snow like." 

We then sprinkled the snow, built a snowman, played with ping pong balls in snow and sang "Let it Snow." We did this indoors as raining outside today but it did make quite a mess which the vacuum cleaner soon dealt with!