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Sensory Play | OCEAN

Sensory Play | OCEAN

by | Feb 18, 2022 | Sensory Play at Home

Explore ocean-themed sensory play using natural beach items or special resources for hours of fun at home

After completing Beach Babies week in Creative Play, we have created some extra sensory play ideas you can do at home. There are so many great resources you can collect for hours of fun, especially when it comes to the exploring the ocean. You can simply take a trip to your local beach to gather natural objects or use specially made items to offer a diverse range of sensory play.

Kids explore water marbles and textured shells, improving fine motor skills with spoons and bowls

Firstly, we have used a sensory tub (this one is from IKEA) and filled with these amazing water marbles. The texture of these are amazing and children can refine their fine motor skills by scooping with spoons, placing into bowls, hiding objects in them (we have used these sensory shells).

Resources:
Water Marbles
Teak Moon Spoons
Textured shells

Older kids use felt mermaids and silk scarves to extend sensory play and enjoy creative storytelling

Pretend play is a great way to extend the sensory experience, especially for the slightly older children. We have added these beautiful felt mermaids and silk scarf to expand the play into some creative storytelling.

Resources:
Felt Mermaids
Silk Scarf

Dyed pasta shapes with edible glitter create fun patterns in playdough, building fine motor skills and coordination

Its amazing how something so simple can make such an impact. we added some uncooked pasta shapes dyed in food colouring and edible glitter. These little shapes can make amazing patterns in the playdough powder. Pressing into the playdough develops great control, coordination and wrist and finger strength.

Resources:
Pasta (Just from your local supermarket)
Food colouring (Just from your local supermarket)
MakeMud Playdough Powder

Use colored pasta shells in clear containers to explore colors and make music by shaking Treasure Tubes

Don’t waste any of the coloured pasta shells! Place them in clear containers or Treasure Tubes like these. A great opportunity to focus on colour identification and well as making music by shaking them.

Resources:
Pasta (Just from your local supermarket)
Food colouring (Just from your local supermarket)
Treasure Tubes

Have fun!

Sensory Play Table | BOTANICAL

Sensory Play Table | BOTANICAL

by | Feb 1, 2022 | Sensory Play at Home

Creating an invitation to play is a wonderful way for your little one to explore new textures, shapes, colours and smells. Providing these opportunities is crucial to development and helps build nerve connections in the brains pathways. It can be difficult to know what sort of sensory play to setup, so we would love to share some of our ideas and resources with you for you to incorporate this important type of play at home.

Firstly, you will need a vessel to hold your sensory play materials. We use the IKEA sensory tables, linked here. They are easy to assemble, easy to store and a great way to contain messy play.

Below is a wonderful botanical setup to provide your child with hours of sensory fun.

Sensory play boosts brain development with textures, colors, and smells. Try our ideas for fun home activities

Depending on your Childs age, interactions with sensory play will vary.

Infants aged 0-12 months will simply love to feel the different textures; screeching the flowers, pressing the playdough, grabbing the flowers and patting the rice.

Toddlers 12-24 months can be offered more purposeful play. They can be shown how to press in the playdough cutters to make shapes, see how they can manipulate the playdough with better fine motor skills, scoop the rice and fill the pots. They also begin to understand the connection that the flowers belong in the pots.

Infants explore textures; toddlers develop fine motor skills with playdough, flowers, and rice activities

Pre-schoolers can also enjoy these simple invitations. Perhaps let them mix the two trays together and see how their creativity blooms when they have multiple sensory items to integrate into the one play. It will promote fine motor skills, eye-to-hand coordination and cognitive development.

Preschoolers mix sensory items to boost creativity, fine motor skills, and cognitive development

RESOURCES

Natural Playdough – Confetti $15.00
Sensory Rice 1kg – Rainbow $12.00
Teak Moon Spoon $7.00
Mini pots $3.25 (for 3 pots)
Dried Sunflower Pack $15.25
Sunflower eco cutter (coming soon)

 

Creative @ Home – DIY Space Sensory

Creative @ Home – DIY Space Sensory

by | Aug 9, 2021 | Sensory Play at Home

Enter the sensational solar system! Engage your child in imaginary play with this easy sensory rice tray.

Explore the solar system with kids using a fun and easy sensory rice tray for imaginative play

This is what you will need:
• A tray with raised edges to contain the content
• Plain rice (amount will depend on the size of the tray you have available)
• Black food dye
• Large ziplock pouch
• Gold or silver glitter paper sheet
• A star hole punch OR simply cut by hand
• Foil
• Space characters/rocket etc. The space men in the image are available from BIG W.

Create a sensory space tray with black rice, foil, glitter stars, and toy astronauts for imaginative play

STEP 1:

Place the amount of rice you would like to us into the ziplock bag and add the black food dye. Leave it to dry out for about 10 mins.

Add black food dye to plain rice in a ziplock bag and let it dry for 10 minutes before use

Use a ziplock bag to colour rice with black dye for your sensory solar system tray

STEP 2: While the dyed rice is drying out, cut out the glitter stars.

Use glitter paper and a star punch or scissors to cut out stars while rice dries

STEP 3:

Scrunch out ‘asteroid’ balls from the foil.

Scrunch foil into small balls to make fun asteroid shapes for sensory space play

STEP 4:

Assemble the rice, stars, asteroids and characters into the tray and let your little one explore!

Combine rice, stars, asteroids, and space figures in a tray for sensory exploration fun

Match with one of Hive’s favourite books, ‘Zoom to the Moon‘. Available from Dymocks Book Stores.

Enhance space play by reading 'Zoom to the Moon', available at Dymocks Book Stores

 

 

 

Creative @ Home – DIY Play Boat

Creative @ Home – DIY Play Boat

by | Aug 6, 2021 | Sensory Play at Home

You and your child can create this sweet little boat for lots of fun play! Made from simple materials usually found in your home, its easy to assemble and a little project you and your kids can do together.

Create a fun floating boat with your child using simple materials from home for interactive play

This is what you will need:
• Empty egg carton
• 2 square sheets of paper (either patterned or you can decorate yourself)
• String
• Skewer
• Scissors
• Sticky Tape
• Blutac

Supplies for making a floating boat: egg carton, paper, string, skewer, scissors, tape, and blutac

STEP 1:

Place the skewer into the egg carton and secure underneath with the blutac to make sure it doesn’t slip out.

Insert the skewer into the egg carton and secure it with blutac to hold it in place

Insert skewer into egg carton and fix underneath with blutac to keep it stable and prevent slipping

STEP 2:

Select one of the square pieces of paper and make a 1cm fold on one of the edges.

Make a 1cm fold along one edge of the square paper to prepare it for attaching as a sail

STEP 3: 

Then make a second fold to form a triangle, from the top of the first fold to the centre of the square. Then cut along the fold you just created. Repeat on the other side. Essentially, we are cutting out a triangle for the mast.

Fold and cut two triangles from the paper edges to create space for the boat’s mast

Make two folds and cut along them to form triangular shapes for the boat’s mast

STEP 4:

To attach the paper mast to the skewer, simply wrap the first paper fold you made around the skewer and tape to secure.

Wrap folded paper around skewer and secure with tape to form the boat’s mast

STEP 5:

Tie the string around the top of the skewer and secure to the egg carton of the base.

Tie string around skewer top and fasten it to the egg carton base for stability

Wrap string around skewer top and secure it to the egg carton base to hold the mast in place

STEP 6:

Using your second piece of square paper, cut an approx. 4cm rectangle and fold it in half length ways.

Cut a 4cm rectangle from the second square paper and fold it lengthwise in half for the sail

Fold the 4cm paper rectangle lengthwise in half to make the sail for your boat craft

STEP 7:

Keeping the paper folded, cut triangles to create the bunting.
NB: You may notice every second triangle will need to be discarded as you can only use the triangles that are fixed at the base end.

Cut triangles from folded paper to make bunting; use only the triangles fixed at the base end

STEP 8:

Using tape or glue, secure the triangles to the string at even intervals.

Use tape or glue to evenly secure paper triangles onto string for festive bunting decoration

Completed! Well done and happy playing!

Finished the boat craft—great job! Now have fun playing with your homemade creation

The Best Playdough Recipe

The Best Playdough Recipe

by | Jul 19, 2021 | Sensory Play at Home

Wondering how to make the same playdough as our Creative play program?

Easy no-cook play dough using flour, oil, salt, cream of tartar, boiling water, food coloring, and glycerine

Here’s the recipe:

BEST EVER NO-COOK PLAY DOUGH RECIPE

You need:

  • 2 cups plain flour (all purpose)
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil  (baby oil and coconut oil work too)
  • 1/2 cup salt
  • 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
  • 1 to 1.5 cups boiling water (adding in increments until it feels just right)
  • gel food colouring (optional)
  • few drops glycerine (essential!)

Method:

  • Mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar and oil in a large mixing bowl
  • Add food colouring TO the boiling water then into the dry ingredients
  • Stir continuously until it becomes a sticky, combined dough
  • Add the glycerine
  • Allow it to cool down then take it out of the bowl and knead it vigorously for a couple of minutes until all of the stickiness has gone. * This is the most important part of the process, so keep at it until it’s the perfect consistency!*
  • If it remains a little sticky then add a touch more flour until just right

Recipe originally sourced from: Best Ever No-Cook Play Dough Recipe! – The Imagination Tree