Cloud Dough Fight!

I have seen a lot about cloud dough and finally got around to trying it with Zel. It was a sunny and fairly warm day so I decided to set everything up outside (thankfully!). I made the cloud dough (I used the recipe from Tinkerlab) and set out a tray with various cookie cutters and measuring spoons. I anticipated some fun imaginative play where we baked a birthday cake or something along those lines...it went very differently. Zel has been throwing everything a lot and I should have realized that he would throw the cloud dough too (Maybe that is why I subconsciously thought to do this activity outside). We filled one or two cookie cutters when I showed Zel that he could make it into a ball because that is what he loves to do with play dough. Two seconds after I handed it to him he launched it at me and giggled. I tried to tell him that we should keep in the container or on the tray, but it did seem pretty fun.

So I told him that we could throw it on the ground. We talked about how the cloud dough balls broke apart, or exploded, when they hit something hard. Zel loved this, but the urge to explode one on Mommy was too great. So I bent the rules and said that we could have a cloud dough fight as long as we don't hit each other in the face. Well, I am so glad I let loose because it was a lot of fun. I think Zel enjoyed it more because I was having so much fun with him.

He even loved the clean up! We got the hose out and rinsed of the back patio. I highly recommend trying this if you don't mind a little mess :)

Painting Leaves

Finger painting is a great sensory activity for kids. You can also use it as an opportunity to talk about colors too! Zel received some finger paints for his birthday a few weeks ago and we decided to use them with our Christmas Countdown project of painting leaves. Adding something new (like leaves) to an old activity (like painting) can really refresh your child's interest in it.

At first, Zel was hesitant to use the finger paints because normally our painting rule is "only paint on the paper." So he started off using a paint brush to paint on the leaves. He thought it was funny that the leaves would stick to the brush, so he experimented with that a little bit. After a few minutes of explaining that this was special paint that is okay to paint on your body, he started using the paint brush to paint on his fingers. It is "finger paint" after all! 

Then he got bold and started rubbing the paint all over his chest and belly. After he was covered he felt confident enough to stick his hand in the paint and use it to paint on the leaves and paper. Once he was finished, we went straight to the bathtub and Zel helped scrub off the paint. He played for so long that I had time to give myself a pedicure!

Bug Bath

Zel LOVES water play. I can't say the word "bath" unless I am going to let him take one. This kid loves water. I decided to incorporate his love of water play and bath time with our bug theme this week. This is really several activities that are all related. So you could do them all or spread them out on different days like we did.

Before you take a bath, you need to get dirty, right? So we had a dirt sensory bin and filled it with pretend bugs, leaves, and dried flowers. Zel dug around with his shovel and every time he discovered something in the dirt he asked, "What's that?" Zel was soon distracted by his ride on car so we moved on to that activity and covered the sensory bin for another day.













That night we decided to grow bugs in the bath tub. Earlier in the week, I bought a pack of the little pellets that grow into sponge shapes when placed in water (it cost $.99 at Michael's). We put a few in the bath and waited for them to expand. Zel didn't really get it and they took a really long time. I think the key is to use really hot water, but Zel's bath was lukewarm. Once some of them did finally form into bugs Zel enjoyed ripping them to shreds. That's my tough guy!


The next day when we were feeling a little bored, we collected all of the bugs out of the dirt sensory bin. Then I filled a pot with warm water and gave Zel a soapy sponge. I told him that the bugs were dirty and he needed to give them a bath. I also added the rest of the pellets that grow into bugs.

He proceed to dump all of the bugs in the pot. 

Then, one by one, he took the all out and put them in his bucket. He then reversed it and put them each back into the water.


Then he took each one out and threw them across the floor.

I then showed him how to scrub each one with the sponge. He chose a few to get clean then placed them back and forth between the water and the bucket.














When he was taking them out of the water, he liked to put his face really close to the water to see the bugs better. Whenever he took out a bug, we talked about which bug it was and what color it was.

He must have been doing this for at least 30 minutes. This is a great go-to activity if you don't mind cleaning up a little water. I usually lay a towel down on the floor to help with any spills.

Turning Failed Bath Crayons into Fun!

I have been really excited about making bath crayons for Zel. I looked up several recipes and it seemed pretty straightforward. Grated bar soap, warm water, and food coloring...how could I mess this up? After the crayons had been drying for over 24 hours, I realized that something was not going as planned. I put the crayons in the freezer, but whenever I took them out they got too soft squished when I held them.



Then I saw this post on Carrots are Orange about ivory soap, which is the kind of bar soap that I used. Ivory soap has extra air in it, which makes sense that it would not get hard enough with water added to it. Now I had all these mushy bath crayons plus two extra bars of Ivory soap. So we decided to give this new sensory activity a try. The bath crayons that I made expanded while they were heating up but as soon as the microwave stopped the whole thing collapsed. I'm assuming that happened because water was added to those. Oh well, but not to worry, I still had another bar of unopened Ivory soap. Zel knew something fun was happening because I put plastic out on the floor plus some tools to explore the material. Zel was already having fun with the plastic sheet and meat tenderizer while the soap was heating up.

Once I gave him the expanded soap, he hit that over and over and over. 

Then I showed him that it turned to powder if you crumpled it with your hands. He tried to copy me and also said "snow" while he did it. His favorite thing (aside from hitting the meat tenderizer on everything!) was to squeeze it as hard as he could while grunting until his face turned red. This is how he shows off that he is strong (He does the same thing if I ask him to make a muscle).

Eventually, the whole bar had been reduced to powder. Zel and I put it all in a plastic container and saved it for another day. We also changed our clothes because we were covered in little powdered specks of soap. Was it worth the clean-up effort? I think so.

Saturday Morning Sensory

Zel seemed a little bored with his toys this morning so I looked around for something I could put together quickly. Zel still talks about the dry rice and beans that we used to make egg shakers, so I grabbed them out of the cabinet. Scooping and pouring is a great learning activity for kids, so I thought I'd let him do just that. I used a baking sheet as a tray and found a few differently sized containers from Zel's play kitchen. Then I found a great container with lots of compartments that I used when he was an infant for freezing homemade baby food. I filled each container with a different material (I used rice, lentils, and bread crumbs). Then I gave him a coffee scoop and a small spoon and asked him to try to fill up the compartments. He did that for a while then focused his efforts on transferring the materials between the various containers. Then he got a little crazy and began flinging beans and rice across the room. So we got out the mini dust buster and I let him try to suck up all the pieces. It was a great searching game as well as practice using his fine motor skills.

Now that we had used all this dried food, I didn't want to just throw it away. I remembered that we just finished a roll of paper towels, so we decided to make a rain stick.



Here's what you'll need:

• paper towel roll
• dryer sheet
• 2 rubber bands
• aluminum foil
• dried beans or other dried food like rice

Cut the dryer sheet in half and cover one end of the cardboard tube. Wrap a rubber band around it to keep it in place. Rip up some pieces of aluminum foil and crumple into long pieces. Put the crumpled aluminum and dried beans (or whatever you are using) into the cardboard tube.



Close up the other side with the other half of the dryer sheet and the other rubber band. You could also have your child decorate the cardboard tube first for even more excitement.

Fun with Rocks

Zel finds rocks to be very exciting, so any activity involving rocks is a hit with him. On a sunny day, I sent Zel out with his Daddy and a bucket to collect some rocks from around our apartment building (I stayed home so I could exercise without a toddler climbing on top of me). We put our bucket of rocks away for a rainy day, when we could use them to paint on. 

Kids love painting, but there is something about painting on items other than paper that makes it extra exciting. For Zel, it was a fun sensory experience too. If you do this activity indoors, I would suggest putting down some plastic or a blanket to cover the floor, especially if you have a toddler. Zel loves to throw rocks, so having the plastic saved the carpet. We used tempera paint and I gave him old applesauce cups to mix the paint in. We selected a few rocks and began painting.

Eventually, Zel began to explore methods of getting paint on the rocks other than using a paintbrush. First, he finger painted on the rocks. Then, he discovered that he could put the rocks into the paint cups to cover them with paint. This proved to be even more fun. He then began pouring the rocks back and forth between the various paint cups. This was the most fun yet.

I added a layer of glitter glue to one of the rocks and used a paint pen to write his name on it.