Contact Collage

This is one of my favourite art activities for both of my boys (aged 1 and 3) to do. I cut up a square (or any other shape) of book covering contact and give them some flat items from the collage box. This time it was some stars and crepe paper. When he was finished sticking things on his collage, I gave him the glitter to shake onto his art work. R loves glitter!!!

When he is finished, I just stick it into his art scrapbook. This is a really easy open-ended craft with little preparation or mess.

Tonging Plastic Puff Balls

I recently picked up a few new items to renew interest in some activities that we have done many times before. Here is two of my finds being put to good use.

I got the flower ice cube tray for about 50c from Ikea. The little plastic puff balls were from Spotlight and were a bit more expensive, at $4 for 2 bags. R used the tongs to move the puff balls to the flower tray.

We have used the puff balls for sorting and M also enjoys playing with them. 



Cooking with a Sensory Tub

This photo was take a while ago, after R was finished playing with a sensory tub.

The sensory medium is a soup mix, containing yellow and green split peas and barley. His interest in the tub was coming to an end, so I added measuring cups and spoons, a muffin tray, a cookie tray, some items from out kitchen play toy box and his little kitchen. In the interest of reducing mess, I lay a blanket on the floor.

R loved this activity. He scooped and mixed the mix and cooked it in thew oven. He made me a cake (yum!). R easily spent an hour with this set-up. Surprisingly, he made very little mess!

This was a great way to allow a bit of creative and imaginary play combined with sensory play.

Colour Sorting in a Muffin Tray

I made this activity for R after seeing it on Childcareland.

It was super simple. I cut the circles out of foam to fit in the bottom of the muffin tray, then cut the rest of the foam sheets into little squares. R simply has to sort the foam squares into the correctly coloured muffin cup. Simple and fun!

Fruit Salad

I recently picked up this set of fruit counters cheaply, because it was not a full set. I got them out with our colour sorting bowls for R to sort with.

R was not really interested in sorting by colour, so I came up with a little game to keep R's interest. I said some fruits and R collected them in a bow, making fruit salad for me. This is blueberry, grape and apple salad.

And strawberry, banana and grape salad.

Lastly, we had banana and strawberry salad.

R was really interested in this, and we spent ages making different combinations. including everything!

As we start working more on numbers, I had an idea to ask for fruit salad with two grapes, three bananas and one blueberry. I was even thinking of making some little cards for R to work independently. 

Cloud Dough

I had a bag of bread flour which had gone out of date, so I decided to make some Cloud Dough after seeing it on Play At Home Mom. It was really easy to make and both the boys had a great time playing with it.

The boys spent about an hour playing with this medium. When they were done, I stored it in a plastic bag in the fridge, so we can re-use it.

I halved the recipe based on the flour that I had available.