Infant+
I am writing a short series of posts entitled "Super Easy Sensory Play". Activities included in the series all contain two or fewer ingredients and are items that are generally found in any house, so no need to run to the store for specialty items. I hope that you will give them all a try! You can read the other posts in the series here:
Super Easy Sensory Play: Soap Foam
You will need:
Ice (if you don't have ice, very cold tap water will work)
Warm Water
A container (I like the weight of glass baking dishes - harder to tip/knock over but any will work)
First I'll talk about the infant and young toddler version of this activity:
With your baby on the ground on a mat or towel, or with your baby in a high chair, add a piece or two of ice to a container and give it to your baby to explore. If they are tentative, you can demonstrate touching it and/or rattle it around in the container.
You can also encourage them to try tasting it.
This was X's first experience with ice. He was fascinated by it. He kept touching it...
Then staring at his fingers like "what the heck?"...
Followed by touching his fingers to his lips. I would reinforce that the sensation was "cold" and narrate what he was doing (sure he might not understand it all, but it doesn't hurt!). I would say something along the lines of "Are you touching the ice with your fingers? Yes, ice is cold! Are your fingers cold?"
Then I let him slide a piece around on his high chair tray.
"Hey Mama! This stuff is cold!"
Then I switched out the ice for some warm water in the glass dish. I encouraged him to touch/splash the water (it was a small amount so it wouldn't get everywhere) and narrated again "Are you touching the water with your fingers? Are you splashing? This water is warm!"
I didn't get any pictures of that part because shortly thereafter he decided that he was hungry and was hoping to get some food in his high chair. So note - activity will last longer if baby is fed first! ;)
For older toddlers/preschoolers:
You can progress the same way (ice is just fun for everyone to play with!) and then you might want to add some water and some small plastic figures. I found these counting bears at a consignment store for a dollar, and S wanted them to be part of her little world. Depending on how verbal your toddler is, you might still want to narrate for them. If you have a preschooler, you can ask them to narrate. "What are you doing? Who are the guys? What sort of world are they in? What are they doing?" In S's world the bears were all friends and they were caught in the ocean! It was very cold and they wanted to melt the ice and get back to their home.
Older toddlers will definitely appreciate if some of their plastic figures have "voices". S will give them voices herself now usually, but sometimes still asks me to step in. :)
With older toddlers, you will probably have to introduce props to extend their play. Any sort of spoon or cup where they can practice pouring is sure to be a hit - getting to stir something in (food coloring, salt, flour, etc) is also very exciting. Several different sized containers/spoons are seen as different items to toddlers (and preschoolers!). I made sure to give S a spoon with the salt to put her in charge of melting the ice.
After the ice was melted, the spoon and the cup that held the salt became involved in the play. Here she is making an underwater cave for some of the bears.
And there was a lot of pouring. S is pretty stellar at pouring small amounts of things now since she's had so much practice, but before now, I'd usually do water play on a towel on top of the splat mat (we use 2 yards of oilcloth from a fabric store as our splat mat). If you don't have a splat mat yet, just use a towel or sheet. When she was younger, I'd also make sure that there wasn't so much water in play that the towel would get soaked.
Next S asked for a paper towel. Napkins/paper towels/paper/cotton balls/pieces of sponge are all fun things to add to water play and I would frequently introduce them to extend her imaginative play when she was a toddler. Now that she's older, she'll just request whatever item it is that she's thinking of. She gave several bears a bath with little bits of paper towel before deciding to use the remaining paper towel as a bridge out of the ocean. And thus all the bears were saved!
S played with this simple set up for over an hour.
So there you have it - that's how we do our open ended sensory play over here.
If you haven't tried sensory play before - I challenge you to give it a try with this sensory experience. You already have everything you need to do it in your house, so why not? ;) And if you're willing, let me know how it goes!
Please always supervise your infant/child at play. Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.
+(2).jpg)
+(1).jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
