The kit included playdough, a few blueberries, a rice and pasta mix, a frying pan and spatula, and some wood butter and maple syrup pieces. I decided to add a few extra accessories from our play kitchen – so the kids would have everything they needed to mix up pancake batter, cook the pancakes and serve them.
I also thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about the ingredients in pancakes and their food sources while we played. Eric Carle’s book, Pancakes, Pancakes provided the perfect segue between pancakes and food sources. I found some free resources on Teach Nutrition that I printed and made into a simple matching game. The kids matched the food to its food source – all of them from farms of course.
The kids really adored this activity. It stayed out all weekend and was consistently played with. My 5 year old daughter asked if we could keep it out forever – lol. When I asked why, she said, “because it smells SOOO good!”
We’ll be doing some play on the topic of ponds this week. I think it will tie in nicely with Earth Day coming up on April 22nd.
To start off, we did a pond fizzy (potion) play activity. My kids love activities involving fizzy reactions, so we do them often.
I usually make my own fizzy powder because the kids go through a lot in one activity. My 3 year old tends to dump entire containers of fizzy powder into the water. To manage this impulse, I put the powder in small containers and refill them throughout the activity.
I prefer fizzy powder recipes that use citric acid powder – so you can just add water to create a reaction. However, baking soda and vinegar will give you the same reaction. The recipe is simple and very forgiving. The measurements do not need to be exact. I will usually just eyeball the amounts of each ingredient.
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If you don’t have Bubbling Epsom Salt, but want to still create a long-lasting, bubbling mix – you can use cornstarch. I have more information on making fizzy/ potion powder with cornstarch in this post.
To add something extra to this activity, I made it look like a pond, so we could talk about creatures that live near ponds. I also included some blue and yellow water, so the kids could try some colour mixing. For fine motor work practice, I put out a variety of tools including pipettes, tweezers and scoops.
The kids had a great time with this activity. They loved the added texture of the grass under the water and of course, scooping, mixing and pouring the ingredients. It sparked a lot of conversation about the animals and creatures who live around ponds.
Other Materials
Yello Door Education Rustic Pourers (Sewing Seeds Play – save with code HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Lovevery colour tablets for blue and yellow water, tweezers & pipettes
It’s the week before St. Patrick’s Day, and we’re getting into the lucky spirit with a few themed activities. My kids love celebrating holidays and special activities add to the fun. Here are a few we tried that were hits with my 3 and 5 year old.
Magnetic Sensory Treasure Hunt
For this activity, I included some magnetic items (magnetic bingo chips, pipe cleaner shamrocks) and non-magnetic items (felt balls, tube ribbon pieces, acrylic gems) in a bin filled with shredded accordion paper. The kids used the magnetic wands to hunt around in the bin and find treasures. My 5 year old loved experimenting with magnetism and was very focused on what items were attracted to the magnetic wands.
This was our first time trying chick pea foam (Aquafaba) so it was new, exciting and tons of fun for the kids. I hid the gold coins and gems in the foam so the kids could hunt around for them with tweezers and fill their cauldrons.
Aquafaba is a fantastic sensory base. I was inspired by @lifewith3men on Instagram to try this and followed her instructions (whip together juice from 2 cans of chick peas + 1/4tsp cream of tartar). It was so easy and the kids loved it. I was also super surprised that it didn’t end up being messy at all.
The tweezers were great for their hand muscles and fine motor skills.
Another thing I loved about this activity is that it is very inexpensive. If you’re having chick peas in your dinner and save the juice, it’s practically free. All the other materials, including the trays, are from the dollar store (Dollarama), except the gems (AliExpress).
3. St. Patrick’s Day Rainbows & Rice Sensory Bin
The third activity was a sensory rice bin. I love a bin like this with lots of different things to discover because I will leave it out for at least a few days. That way, the kids can explore at their own pace. Over the past few days, they have been enjoying scooping rice and filling up little cauldrons with all kinds of treasures.
Materials
Rice with sequins
Rainbow wood insert & rainbow tray – Eye Spy Club
St. Paddy’s trinkets and loose parts – Eye Spy Club and Highway to Railway (Instagram)
Wood cauldron tray – AW and Collective
Felt balls – Sewing Seeds Play (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Bauspiel lucent cubes – Scholars Choice
Resin containers – Playspiration (Instagram)
Wood rainbow – Tiny Fox Hole
Grimm’s Giant Gems – Sewing Seeds Play
Acrylic small gems – AliExpress
So there are 3 ideas for St. Patrick’s Day sensory and messy play. Would you try any of these activities? Let me know in the comments.
I love Peter Rabbit and Beatrix Potter’s world of adorable critters. I used to read the stories over and over again when I was a child. So, when I saw Tiny Fox Hole’s set of Peter Rabbit characters I had to get them. I wanted to give them a a world to live in where my kids could recreate parts of the books and their own imaginative stories. This play tray is what I came up with.
Supplies I used
Tuff Tray (mine is from Scholar’s Choice)
Cardboard tray insert (I made this using the box the tray came in)
Wooden characters (Tiny Fox Hole)
Grass Section
Artificial grass squares (Dollarama)
DIY Tree Burrow (see here for more info on how I made it)
Wood furniture – The Friendly Woodworker from Wonder + Kind
Miniature vegetables (Maileg)
Felt pond (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Glass beads
Grapat Mandala Coins
River rocks and artificial greenery
Grimm’s wood stacking bowls
Grapat Mandala Eggs
Resin eggs (The Creative Mix Shop)
Grapat Mandala Flowers
Woods Section
Sensory Mix (homemade)
Raduga Grez and Ostheimer wood trees
Wood mushrooms (Dollarama)
Stone and gem mushrooms (AliExpress)
Grapat Mandala Beehives
Grapat Mandala Mushrooms
Grapat Mandala Trees
Felt bee (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Mr. McGregor’s Garden
Dry black beans (Bulk Barn)
Goki My Little Garden Doll Accessories (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Felt worms, ladybug, bees, butterfly and dragonfly (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Finally, I set up our Yoto Mini with the Peter Rabbit card so the kids and I could listen to the stories we played. This tray is one of our favourites. What do you think?
Have you ever played with Cloud Dough? It has a really fun texture. It can hold together like a dough when compressed, but then will crumble again easily under too much pressure. Cloud dough is one of my kids very favourite textures to play with and they love to pretend bake with it. It’s also very easy to make with ingredients you probably have in your cupboard.
Cloud Dough Recipe
8 cups flour
1 cup oil
Mix 2 ingredients together. That’s it!
The Activity
For the activity, I prepared a few quick recipe cards for “Valentine’s Day Cupcakes” and set the Cloud Dough out with some measuring cups, scoops, cupcake liners, and other small containers.
I included a bowl of pastel, mini styrofoam balls for the “frosting” (from AliExpress), some polymer clay slices for “sprinkles” (also from AliExpress) and some resin candies, chocolates and mini cupcakes (Stars and Sensory, The Creative Mix Shop, and Dollarama).
I also added some wood heart stamps that were a quick DIY. To make them I stacked 2 wooden hearts (from Dollarama) and hot glued them on a wood block.
I put all the materials out on our IKEA Flisat table with a plasticized table cloth underneath to attempt to catch some of the mess.
My Thoughts
Fun– High
My kids love Cloud Dough. They will request I bring it out if we haven’t played with it in a while. They also loved the added texture of the styrofoam balls. My 3 year old son was very content scooping material and adding decorations, while my 5 year old loved following the recipes and then inventing her own creations.
Engagement Time– 1 hr
My kids were very engaged in this activity so they played uninterrupted and mostly independently for over an hour.
Cost– Low
The cost to recreate this activity is low. The ingredients for Cloud Dough are inexpensive and may already be in your cupboard. I used some resin candies and chocolate from small shops that I already had, but you could easily just use the pink and red hearts from Dollarama as add-ins. The styrofoam balls are also inexpensive. I found them to be the best price on AliEpress, but you could also find them on Amazon (they are sometimes called “slime add-ins”).
Effort– High
For me, this is the only draw-back of this activity. It is messy – one of the messiest we do. For me, this means I only bring out Cloud Dough on weekends or days when I have lots of time to clean up afterward. Even though the table cloth on the ground does catch some mess, I ended up having to vacuum when the activity was done. The kids also needed to change clothes when they were done.
Is it worth doing? Yes! I think so. The kids love it and it’s inexpensive to make. Plus Cloud Dough keeps well for years. I’ve had mine for at least 2 years now.
It also has lots of learning benefits.
It’s a great activity for working on early math skills – number recognition, measurement, and an introduction to fractions;
Scooping the dough, frosting and sprinkles promotes hand-eye coordination; and
Measuring the materials and filling (and overfilling) the muffin cups is a great activity for the containment schema (when your child is learning about spacial awareness and how much of something fits inside a container).
We repurposed part of our last Winter Sensory Play Tray for this activity. The kids weren’t quite ready to let go of the last activity and I like to save effort and repurpose activities when I can. So, I put the tray with the ice slide and fake snow back outside to refreeze and brought it back in when we were ready to do this activity.
I made an ice ring with frozen fruit and evergreen sprigs and some fizzy powder (recipe here). I added warm water, salt and scoops, pipettes and bowls. The kids decided to bring in some winter animals and loose parts.
Review of this activity
Overall, we found this activity to be mediocre. There were some fun elements to it, but some misses as well. Here was our experience
Enjoyment – Medium
The kids always like a fizzy activity, so they jumped into mixing the fizzy powder and water right away. They played with the tray on and off for about 5-6 hours and the play evolved from fizzy play, to melting ice, to making soup, to small world play. However, they found the fruit and evergreen ice ring confusing. They weren’t sure what to do with it and because it was difficult to get the fruit out of the ice, they lost interest in it quickly.
Learning – Low
We’ve done quite a few fizzy activities, so the science wasn’t new to them. We talked about how salt and warm water can melt ice and the kids found that interesting. Most of the learning from this activity involved fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination from working the pipette. So, for us this tray didn’t have a big learning component. That could explain why the kids didn’t find it highly engaging.
Cost – Low
We reused the ice slide and the fake snow from our last Winter Tray activity by storing the tray outside and the ingredients for the ice ring and the fizzy powder were things I had in my cupboards, fridge and freezer. The citric acid powder for the fizzy powder is inexpensive on Amazon and I’ve had the container of bubble bath for over a year – you only need a small amount.
Effort – Medium
There’s weren’t any special skills were involved in setting up this activity, just some planning ahead. I prepared the ice ring a day in advance and the fizzy powder just before doing the activity. The large tray is excellent for containing mess, so there was nothing to clean up on the ground after. The most challenging part of clean up was maneuvering the tray over to the sink to pour out the water (I definitely needed my husband’s help). There was a little spillage in the process, but thankfully water is easy to clean up. That’s why it’s one of my favourite sensory elements for kids activities.
Final Thoughts
I had a few learnings and take aways from doing this activity. I think it would be a good activity for a weekend, or any day when you can leave it out for a few hours. The lack of messiness definitely helped make this possible.
I wouldn’t repeat this activity again in the same way. I really needed to allow a lot of time for the ice to melt in order for the kids to get the most out of it. It took a few hours for the ice to start melting enough to get fruit and evergreens out, even with the help of the salt and water. The kids didn’t have enough patience to stay engaged that long. Next time I make an ice melting activity, I would make the ice thinner – so it’s easier for the kids to melt.
Fizzy powder, also called potion powder, is really easy to make. Just add water to see a fizzing and bubbling reaction. You can get a similar reaction from combining vinegar and baking soda, but I prefer to use water as the liquid for activity play. It’s easier, readily available, less smelly and a little more friendly for the kids to stick their hands in.
My kids like to use lots of it when we do a fizzy activity so I find it cheapest to make it myself. I usually just eyeball the measurements, it doesn’t need to be exact. Here are the ingredients I use:
1 cup baking soda
1/4 cup citric acid powder (I buy mine on Amazon)
2-3 tbsp Epsom salt bubble bath or dry soap/ bubble bath (mine is from Happy Hippo Bath Co.) *This ingredient is optional, but I find it helps make more bubbles that last longer once the water is added.
That’s it. Pour all the ingredients together and mix. Be careful not to get any water on the mix until it’s time for the fizzy play.
The kids had a blast playing with this winter activity last night. The set-up was pretty simple. I set the empty Tuff Tray outside on a slight angle and poured some water in. I left the tray outside overnight to freeze. The next day, I brought the tray in, mixed up some fake snow, and brought in some real snow. For the fake snow, I used Snowball Play from Zimpli Kids (Sewing Seeds Play). I filled the tray with approximately 1/3 of each material. Then I added Schleich and Terra by Battat animals, loose parts (winter resin loose parts from Little Play Lab Co., Bauspiel lucent cubes, clear snowflakes from Dollarama), scoops and bowls.
I usually stick to plastic, resin and metal add-ins for wet activities, so they are easy to wash after. Once the kids started playing, they decided to add a bowl of water to the tray for some extra washing and melting fun.
We have done snow and ice trays in past years, but I think this one was the most engaging. My guess is the variety of textures sparked the kids’ creativity and imagination. The ice was a fun slide for the penguins, other animals and frozen figures. The fake snow had a squishy, slightly sticky texture that was fun to mush and mix and the real snow was enjoyable to scoop and pack into bowls. I have a feeling they will be asking for a repeat of this one.
The Christmas stuff is mostly put away and even though the kids are asking for Valentine’s Day decorations (they are always looking forward to the next holiday), I am squeezing in a bit of winter appreciation. Although it feels as if winter has just started, I have found over the past few years that January is really the best time to do winter theme activities. December is dominated by Christmas, February is Valentine’s Day, then we are planning for Easter and after Easter we are thinking “spring”. We mostly appreciate winter outdoors – we live in a great area for outdoor winter sports and especially love downhill skiing. However, we can’t be outside all the time and I like to bring a little winter joy inside too. Here are a couple of the things we’re up to this week.
Winter Book Rotation
I keep some seasonal books put away and bring them out at the relevant time of year. This way, the books seem fresh and new to the kids. New books on the shelf will spark my kids interest and get them asking for story time. Here are some winter books I put out.
Winter Book Rotation
EasyWinter Sensory Activity
I have a few activities in mind for this month, but I don’t quite have them ready yet. Yesterday, I had promised my daughter that I would have an activity ready for her when she came home from school. I think it’s important to keep my promises to my kids, so when the activity I had planned wasn’t ready, I scrambled to find something else quickly. Fortunately, I had bought a Pour and Play jar of sensory rice from Eye Spy Club about a month ago. It was the perfect quick and easy activity for a school night. My daughter rushed in the door after school and was so excited to see her activity. I was really glad I had managed to set something up for her.
