Edible Finger Paint

My littlest ones has discovered the joys of mark making but also likes too put everything in their mouth, so this is a very simple home made paint that is ok if they eat some of it!

                                                    Edible Finger Paint

                                                    1/4 cup or 40g cornflour
                                                    1 cup of water or 280ml
                                                    food colouring

Place cornflour and water in a pan and heat, it will start to thicken, go slightly translucent and come away from the side of the pan, as soon as the translucent streaks appear, turn of the heat,  just remember to keep on stirring and it will thicken.
Then pour into your paint container and add food colouring

Ice Painting

Ice painting a perfect creative activity for a very hot day :) Mind you when I picked up the minded children from school and they asked "What are we doing today", they looked at me a bit funny when I answered with ice cube painting but there were smiles as well.

The night before I prepared an ice cube tray filled with water and mixed in different food colourings, it was then put in the freezer.

After 30 minutes they were beginning to freeze and after an hour most were ready to have an ice pop stick put into them and it would stay up.

When they first started  they only got a scrapping of colour

but as the ice slowly melted the colours began to flow

 to produce some lovely pictures, the children really liked the way the paint merged and spread out across the paper.

I loved the muted colours

Pirates and Treasure

We had fun in the garden, making use of our tuff spot, sand and water to create a treasure island, complete with pirates and treasure chest.

They the decided, it needed a castle too, so out came the sand castle moulds

but it wasn't long before the discovered how much fun could be had by rearranging everything

and creating a new scene

then they discovered that really wet sand is great to go walking in!

treasure island is no more but lots of fun had.

Father's day

For Fathers day this year, I decided on a very simple card but hand prints usually go down well. This was easy then to do even with the babies.

 

but rather than just adding happy fathers day to the inside I found some poems about Dads and printed out some, then the children choose which one they wanted to put in their card. They enjoyed listening to the different poems (there were several) and trying to decide which ones their Dads would like best.

Sensory Bottles

We had one very wet afternoon during half term, so I decided this was a good time to make our sensory bottles for the littleones. The children had a lovely time deciding what they were going to put in the bottles, liquid or dry, quiet or noisy ect and also thinking about what the babies might like.

The shredded colour paper bottle had some rice added to it so it makes  a lovely sound.

Found a good use for those seeds that are past there use by date, the children said they didn't want to add too many as they were worried it would be too heavy for the babies to lift, which was a really sweet thought :)

Then we had mixture of bottles, bottle 1 glitter and water, bottle 2 glitter water and baby oil and bottle 3 glitter, baby oil, water and food colouring.

No Mess Painting

I've seen no mess painting on other blogs and thought we would give it a go but they have always used a ziploc bag. We didn't have any of these and the only freezer bags we have are either blue or green in colour. I didn't feel they would work so well as the coloured bag would distort the colours of the paints. So I set about with a cardboard box and cling film. I tightly wrapped the cardboard in clingfilm.

The poured on the paint and tightly wrapped the paint and cardboard in another layer of cling film.

Now my first attempt was ok and you can see how much paint we used but quickly realised that you needed a lot more paint than I originally thought.

So for my second attempt we used three times the amount of paint, which worked a lot better. Our youngest one really enjoyed the experience

and they were very quickly joined by the other children.

I have been able to reuse the base as it was so well wrapped in clingfilm, that when I carefully remove the outer layer all I need to do is wash the paint of, leave to dry and then we are ready for another go.

Shaving Foam and Jelly

We regularly have some form of sensory play going on at my house, this can vary from bread baking, finger painting to playing with jelly.

We had a lovely warm day the other day, so I decided that we would all head outside to see how much fun 5 children could have with 1 can of shaving foam and my patio doors. It was a big hit, they loved to smear it across the glass, running their hands repeatedly through the foam, sometimes drawing pictures and then rubbing them out again. I think I might need a bigger patio door!

Today I let them loose with some jelly, not the horribly sticky shop bought jelly but some I made up some with gelatine and food colouring. To start with they had just the 3 primary colours and they enjoyed exploring not only how the jelly moves and feels but the way the colours mix together and create new ones. It was brilliant to hear one child say "I've made purple, red and blue make purple!" they were very amazed but then asked what other colours could they make, we set about trying other combinations of colour. I'm wondering if this will be something they will remember, it might even be a better way of teaching the mixing of colours rather than with paints! The highlight of today was one of my children when they started with me last September was very reluctant to touch anything and eyed any type of sensory activity with suspicion  when I first introduced shaving foam to them, they would only touch it with the tip of one finger, today, they were straight into the tub and the last to leave the activity, they wren't at all bothered by the textures etc one happy childminder as well as a happy child :)

After lots of mixing etc, they asked if we they could add some shaving foam and I thought why not! It certainly added a new dimension to it and honestly it did clean up very quickly and easily.

Children learn about their world through their senses and have done so since birth. So providing a sensory rich play experience can help the child, through stimulating their senses, especial their sense of touch, to really connect with their body and develop body awareness.  Sensory play is also very relaxing through the rhythmic pouring, stirring, squeezing etc this aids a child's emotional development, because it helps them learn ways to calm themselves. The physical manipulation of the different sensory material, will aid their hand eye co-ordination and fine motor skills e.g. while playing with rice or pulses. It will help with problem solving, as they learn to deal with different types of material and how they can manipulate and use this material.

Sensory play is not just about the sense of touch, a child will use their eyes to look at the colours, movement etc, hearing, as they listen to the different sounds material make as they are poured from one container to another, smell, if you have added essential oils , herbs etc to the material, or through cooking, taste can also be used during cooking or food tasting to involve all the senses and help the child learn about their world. Through sensory play the child learns to integrate all the information coming to them through their senses. Oh yes and finally sensory play is just great fun for all ages, including adults!