Monday 30 April 2012

Rainbow Rice Sensory Play

A couple of weeks ago I made up some Rainbow Rice for Sensory Play. Last week on a cold and wet morning we got around to using it!

Here is what we started with, baking dishes, whisks, measuring spoons and cups, colander, wooden spoon, two big tubs and of course the rice!

Miss M and Master E took great delight in mixing the colours up and running their fingers thought the rice, I have to admit it felt great.

Filling the colander to shake the rice out.

Plenty of pouring. Thr rice made a great sound hitting the bottom of the baking tin.

Master E with his caaaakkkkkeeee!
Measuring.

Miss M loved stirring.

Filling up the muffin tin.
Mmmm cake, stir, stir, stir! 
Spooning.

A bit more measuring.
This is so much fun!
Miss M decided we needed a dinosaur. He had lots of rice to eat. Num, num, num.

The dinosaur is still eating, greedy dinosaur!
Another cake! (we ate so much cake that day!)
Pour, pour, pour.

Funnels are the best trumpets.

The funnels were added later and were a huge hit. They loved watching the rice pour though the bottom.
Master E and Miss M had so much fun with this Sensory Play cooking. Master E played for over an hour and was so busy. We used lots of new measurement words and had a great time. A little tip we used a mess mat underneath our play to collect as much of the spilt rice as we could. This made it easy once the containers got low to top them back up.

Thinking this will be a regular Sensory Play experience at our place!

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Sunday 29 April 2012

Easy Sock Caterpillars

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is still the favourite book at our house, so here we go with another caterpillar craft.
This one is really simple all you need are some socks (odd ones would do) I brought two cheap stripy pairs, newspaper, elastic bands and googly eyes (the ones we had were adhesive).

All ready for crafting!

Scrunching the paper into balls to pop into the sock.

Master E concentrating very hard to push the paper into the sock.



Pushing the paper down, down, down into the bottom of the sock.

Miss M busy ripping as much of the paper as she could!


Showing off their finished caterpillars.

Close up of the finished product. I used the elastic bands to segment the body. The kids added their own eyes, which I later glued on with the hot glue gun.

Easy peasy craft in an afternoon. Miss M found this one rather tricky and I made most of hers. Master E was great at filling up his sock.
ENJOY!

Thursday 26 April 2012

Cubby House Fun

Too many wet days prompted some cubby building. Master E loved it and played inside for hours adding cushions, cars and place-mats. Miss M was keen to get in too. They even had to eat their afternoon tea in there. I love how much they enjoy the simple things!



Getting ready to make our cubby.

We needed some cushions to make it comfy!

So much giggling!

Boo! 


All this playing has made us hungry, afternoon tea time please!

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Cooking in the Garden

Master E is in love with cooking at the moment so we decided since it was a beautiful day that we should have some cooking in the garden play.


This is what we started with, some muffin trays, plastic eggs, frying pans, buckets, platter, wooden spoons and egg cups.

Then we added the pinecones.

Straight away Master E started cooking!

Here he is flipping his pancake.


We apparently needed a stove so I brought out an old coffee table which did the trick and also added some egg cartons.

There was a lot of sorting.

Miss M loved the pinecones. She liked running her hands over them and kept calling them apples.
The "cookies" were baking under the bench seat.

Some more sorting. This kept Master E busy for a very long time. He opened all the eggs and put them into the muffin tray. He had more pieces than spots in the tin, so much rotating was done.



Miss M trying to put the eggs back together.


Those pesky eggs still won't all fit!

Miss M enjoyed dropping the eggs onto the platter as they would spin around. This kept her entertained for quiet awhile.


Miss M cooking her eggs.



Cooking on the stove.

Once they were cooked they had to go for a walk to the shops!

This kept both Miss M and Master E busy for a very long time. They had lots of fun sorting and baking all kinds of goodies. We will be playing this one again soon!

Thursday 12 April 2012

Rainbow Rice for Sensory Play and Craft

I've been meaning to make rainbow rice for some time. Today while both my monkeys were asleep I finally got around to it, and now we have some beautiful rainbow rice for sensory play and craft fun!

It is so easy.
You will need
Rice ~ I used cheap long grain rice from Aldi
White Vinegar
Assorted Food Colouring



The plain white rice ready to be coloured. This is one cup.

I added one tablespoon of the white vinegar and a few drops of food colouring, stirred it through and this was the result.

I poured the rice onto lined baking trays to dry. I made sure I rinsed the container before creating a new colour.

All of our rainbow rice drying outside ready for some sensory play.

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Crayon Resist Easter Eggs

Master E has a love for Chocolate Eggs, Drawing and Paint. So we decided to combine all of these when creating some Easter Decorations.
Crayon Resist is super easy and you get gorgeous colourful results every time.
To start with I printed off some templates of Easter Eggs.


Master E enjoyed colouring all over the Easter Eggs. He is into spirals, spots and stripes at the moment. These crayola crayons were great as they were very vibrant.

Eggs all ready for painting.

Painting over the crayon using water colour paints. We used paint cakes in a set of 6.

A face on one of the eggs up close.

Master E was having so much fun with this that after we finished the eggs we got out some more paper and did some drawings.
He loved using the white crayon that you couldn't see on the white paper and painting over to reveal his image.

There was lots of wow and amazement at the image appearing.

We did lots and lots of E's, Master E loves EEEE's!

A close up of the E he drew and then revealed with the paint.
When the eggs were dry we cut them out and have strung them up as Easter garland.