by Joanne Wallace | Feb 18, 2022 | Sensory Play 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.
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
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
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
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!
by Joanne Wallace | 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.
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.
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.
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)
by Joanne Wallace | Aug 9, 2021 | Sensory Play at Home
Enter the sensational solar system! Engage your child in imaginary play with this easy sensory rice tray.
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.
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.
STEP 2: While the dyed rice is drying out, cut out the glitter stars.
STEP 3:
Scrunch out ‘asteroid’ balls from the foil.
STEP 4:
Assemble the rice, stars, asteroids and characters into the tray and let your little one explore!
Match with one of Hive’s favourite books, ‘Zoom to the Moon‘. Available from Dymocks Book Stores.
by Joanne Wallace | 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.
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
STEP 1:
Place the skewer into the egg carton and secure underneath with the blutac to make sure it doesn’t slip out.
STEP 2:
Select one of the square pieces of paper and make a 1cm fold on one of the edges.
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.
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.
STEP 5:
Tie the string around the top of the skewer and secure to the egg carton of the base.
STEP 6:
Using your second piece of square paper, cut an approx. 4cm rectangle and fold it in half length ways.
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.
STEP 8:
Using tape or glue, secure the triangles to the string at even intervals.
Completed! Well done and happy playing!
by Vanessa Lynch | Jul 19, 2021 | Sensory Play at Home
Wondering how to make the same playdough as our Creative play program?
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
