Bath Time Goop

Today was a rainy and humid day.  I had promised Bea that the next time we had a rainy day we would do, what she calls, "bath painting" again.  I only realized that the last time we had done this was in March and she's still talking about it!

Bath painting is just shaving cream mixed with food coloring and the kids use this to paint our tub.  So far we haven't had a problem with stains in the tub, although we did have some blue stains on our hands today so I think I'll try liquid watercolors next time.

In addition to the bath paints I found a recipe from Growing A Jeweled Rose called Goop and thought it would be fun to try.  It's basically just a mixture of corn starch and water (and color, if you want) but the substance it makes is insane.  It's liquid but also solid, when you try it you'll understand what I mean.  Here's our Goop after I first mixed it.

At first Bea didn't want to play with it.  She kept saying it was really sticky.

 After a few minutes they were both well into it.  We added the bath paints and they painted the walls, mixed colors, painted a few bath toys, and ended it with putting their feet into what was left of the Goop.

Once we were finished I simply turned on the water and we turned clean up into another game.  I'm definitely making Goop again soon!  I think this held their attention for almost an hour, which I think is pretty good for a 3.5 year old and a 21 month old!

Heather

Moldable Sand Dough

Another hot and humid day here and with the threat of thunderstorms we decided to do our Moldable Sand project in the screened in porch.

I also found this one at Growing a Jeweled Rose, she really has some great ideas!

It actually looks like scrambled eggs here, I followed the recipe she listed which was baking soda, food coloring, and then add enough water to make it moldable.  I also added the suggested salt to give it more of a grainy texture.  She did warn against adding too much water, which I didn't think I had done while mixing it but as the kids played with it the water started to come out and it ended up a little soupy.  Which actually didn't seem to bother either of them, Bea even said she liked it.

Since ours was a little wet it ended up making a huge mess.  The good news though is that it wiped off the kids very easily and I left it outside to dry out some before cleaning up, which made it very easy and simple.

Oh, and Bea insisted on wearing her sun hat when we started playing with the "sand".

Heather

Fruit Loop Sensory Bin

Bea loves sensory bins so I thought I'd start recording some of the ones we do.  Today it was pouring down rain the entire morning so since Soccer was cancelled I decided to pull this out.

Bea and Charlie both love scooping and pouring and since Charlie will still sometimes put things in his mouth I thought fruit loops would be a good option.  I purchased an inexpensive bag of fruit loops from Target and added some of our measuring cups and teaspoons.

Needless to say they played with it for about 45 minutes before we finally moved onto something else.  And they kept asking to pull it out the entire morning!  I guess we'll keep this in rotation.

Heather

Valentine's Day Sensory Box

For awhile now I've wanted to make a sensory box for Bea.  I've seen tons of great ideas online and decided to finally do it this weekend.

I went with a Valentine's Day theme after seeing this cute image on Pinterest.  The idea came from a blog called Pink and Green Mama.  We did a lot of the same things, dyed the rice pink using gel food coloring and alcohol (although next time I will absolutely add essential oils, the alcohol smell was overwhelming) and I also ran across the heart and lip containers in the dollar spot at Target.  In addition to those things I added some foam heart stickers (which Bea didn't want anywhere near her containers), a coffee scoop for scooping rice, a set of measuring spoons that I found at the Dollar Tree, some clear "gems" I found at the Dollar Tree, and a purple Easter egg container (this one Bea found and added, guess she didn't get the memo about it being a Valentine's Day box!).

I can't even tell you how excited she was to play with this.  I had it on her table when she woke up from her nap and just let her find it.  I think within 10 seconds of coming down the stairs she had it spotted and went straight to it and started scooping.  It did take a lot of "the rice goes in the bin, not on the floor" but part of that is also my fault, I think we need a bigger bin for her.  After playing with it about 30 minutes or so she wanted to do something else so we put it away, but she asked several times over the weekend to bring it back out, which we did.

    

Heather