Goldilocks and the Three Bears Sensory Play

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Poppet favourite book just now is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The version we have is by Lauren Child (who is also behind the Charlie and Lola books) and it is a beautiful retelling of the classic fairytale. The pictures are amazing -real teddies and dolls are placed in elaborate miniature scenes and then photographed which give it a magical feel and set it apart from other storybooks. Poppet is captivated by it and requests it daily since we got it nearly two weeks ago and I really enjoy reading it to her. It is definitely going to be one of our most treasured storybooks.

Inspired by the book I decided to set up some Goldilocks sensory play. This sensory play is fantastic for exploring textures, strengthening hand-eye coordination, developing language and introducing simple maths skills. 

I found a large, medium and small teddy to play the role of father, mother and baby bear, and put them on three different chairs (I even managed to give father bear a 'too hard' chair and mother bear a 'too soft' one). Father bear held our Goldilocks and the Three Bears book and mother bear held another  book called 'A Bad Week For The Three Bears' which is about the week leading up to the incident with Goldilocks. A doll with yellow hair became our Goldilocks.

In an under-bed storage tub I put a big bowl of dry oats along with three differently sized bowls and various spoons and scoops to explore it with (the under-bed storage tub was a vain attempt to contain the oats somewhat -in reality I had to hoover the entire room up after this play session!). I went to bed excited to see their faces in the morning when they saw the bears!

In the morning however, the girls walked straight past the set up and didn't notice it at all! It had to be pointed out to them at breakfast and then they were very keen to investigate. Poppet excitedly recognised father bear, mother bear and baby bear and was very focussed on filling up the bowls with 'porridge'. 

Little, meanwhile, just ate it. Even thought she had just finished her own breakfast she still managed to squeeze in some more. She prefaced each wooden spoonful with "no no no no no no!", so used is she to being told that when she eats things! It was such a novelty for her to actually be allowed to eat something she was playing with.

Poppet made sure everyone got their bowl of porridge; baby bear had the smallest bowl and she helped him eat it.

She also displayed excellent conflict resolution skills by giving Goldilocks her own bowl of porridge, thereby avoiding any porridge theft on this occasion.

After a while the porridge was taken over to the play kitchen and put on the hob. Poppet carefully counted in spoons of water and did a lot of mixing.

The girls loved their play session; the enjoyment they got from it was more than worth the 10 minutes of clean up that it required afterwards! While they were not really interested in the books at the time of playing, we sat down to read them in the afternoon together.  I'm hoping to bring more books to life like this in the future - I have my eye on Lauren Child's The Princess and the Pea for some dried pea sensory play!

Poppet: 3yrs 2mos

Little: 1yr 5mos

Valentine's Sensory Tub

Sensory tubs are a great play tool and very inviting to children to explore - they are also free as they are created from bits and bobs you already have around the home! My two can't start playing with them quick enough - picking up whatever grabs their attention first, guessing as to what an object's use is, discovering the different textures, experimenting....they offer so many opportunities for learning through play. Often all of the objects are already familiar to them but seeing them in this new context makes them much more interesting.

I made a quick Valentine's sensory tub using objects from around the house that had a heart connection - we used heart shaped silicone moulds, heart biscuit cutters, a toy stethoscope, a little heart shaped pillow, pink felt hearts, a heart sponge, a heart rubber, heart shaped sequins and beads, candles in the shape of champagne bottles, a heart shaped trinket box, pink tissue paper, and dried pasta (if I was more organised I could have dyed this red but this was just a quickly put together tub).

Poppet was quite careful and methodical about exploring the tub (actually it wasn't a tub we used this time - it was a low sided crate that originally held musical instruments), filling up the little moulds with items from the tub and noticing all the heart shapes in the different objects. Little was a bit more destructive - she just went wild with it excitedly flinging bits everywhere and eating the pasta. She needs a bit more training with sensory tubs to learn to try to keep the contents inside the tub! In the meantime I'll only use larger fillers like pasta twirls rather than things like rice and lentils to make the clean up a bit easier.

Despite all the lovely little hearts on offer, the dried pasta seemed to hold the most appeal.

Surprisingly Little was the one who picked up the stethoscope, and as soon as she put it on Poppet immediately 'didn't feel well' and lay down so that she could be tended to by Dr. Little.

The next day I picked out the felt and sequin hearts and pink tissue paper and let the girls use them to make Valentine's cards with  (Little needed a lot of help with the glue!). Poppet insisted the card she made was for her sister which was very sweet!

Poppet: 3yrs

Little: 16mos

Shredded Paper

 

Just what it sounds like really. Inspired by the shredded paper sensory activity onboard the Play Talk Read bus, I made our own one at home. I filled up a box with shredded paper and added a pack of artificial pink petals and some 'treasures' to find in amongst it all (just some small toys). As it turns out, the petals and treasures were completely unnecessary as they were completely ignored. Honestly, all the girls wanted was a big box of shredded paper. 

Over the last three days they have come back to this box time and time again. We did start off with a smaller plastic box but have gravitated towards the larger cardboard one because they like to get in with the paper.

It has become a car, a bath and a bed. They don't seem to be getting bored with it! Sometimes I find piles in places, like in the back of Poppet's car, or neatly placed on top of the sofa, and wonder what they were thinking of. 

It invariably ends up everywhere but Poppet is quite helpful in tidying it up (Little, not quite so), and it is not so hard to gather together in handfuls and pop back into its box as it is in long strands and not little pieces. So, in conclusion, it makes your house looks very messy but is quickly rectified.  

I do have to spend quite a bit of time pulling shreds out from Little's mouth; her tendency to eat anything and everything is showing no sign of waning yet. 

Poppet: 2yrs 8mos

Little: 11mos

Rice Sensory Play (with tubes and cars)

We have to do this type of activity when Little is down for her naps as she has a tendency to eat everything she comes across. For the few days after we put this tray together, Poppet would ask for it as soon as I had taken Little upstairs!

I bought a kilo bag of rice for £1 and poured the whole lot into a tray and added some trucks and cars we bought from a carboot sale for 25p each, along with some cardboard tubes, scoops and a funnel.

Poppet started off running the rice through her fingers and pouring it from hand to hand. Uncooked rice has a lovely sensation and it is very therapeutic to play with. I think Poppet liked it because you can play with it like sand but it doesn't stick to your skin and make a mess like sand. Eventually she tried fitting the cars and trucks into the tubes, figuring out which ones were 'too big' and which rolled down. She liked declaring "it fit mum!".

She made roads through the rice, picked up and deposited mounds of rice with the trucks, used the scoops to fill up the tubes to the top with rice; so many different ways to play with rice! A lovely little sensory play activity. I'll reuse this rice for another playtime but I think I'll dye the rice next time to add an extra element to it.

The next day I got the megablocks and cellotape out and got Poppet to help me try to make some kind of truck-filler-upper. My first attempt wasn't very good and collapsed to which Poppet observed "it not very good mum". Our second attempt worked better although I don't think it would win any architectural prizes.

We turned another tube into a tunnel that Poppet could drop cars down, which got a lot of use. A lot of rice did escape the tray so you do have to have a dustpan & brush handy to clean up after this activity but it's more than worth it!

Poppet: 2yrs 8 mos

Little: 11mos

Dinosaur Small World Play

Our local sells-everything-under-the-sun shop had a box of toy dinosaurs when we visited it earlier in the week; Poppet spent a long time rifling through it, comparing dinosaurs, trying to find a 'nice' one. She eventually settled on a quite friendly-looking brachiosaurus (they have their names helpfully printed on the underside). He still had a bit of a fearsome toothy grin so she obviously felt she had to confirm with me - "izzat a nice one?", before she was satisfied enough to take him home. We were en route to the library so picked up a dinosaur book while we were there, and thus a dinosaur enthusiast was born.

At home, we made a dinosaur small world play scene using a large garden sieve. We filled it with sunflower seeds and split peas, and then used greenery from the garden stuck into lumps of playdough to create trees and bushes.

It smelled really good! The playdough was eucalyptus scented and the foliage included rosemary and sage. I also discovered some mini dinosaurs in our job lot of plastic animals we got from eBay, so these became 'baby' dinosaurs.

We attempted to match the dinosaurs up to the pictures in the book.....

Later on I discovered that what I thought was a dinosaur was actually a kangaroo, felt a bit stupid. Should have noticed the ears......

We have had a couple more dinosaur books out now and they have really highlighted my terrible dinosaur-related knowledge! For instance, did you know that not all dinosaurs were wiped out?! Some survived and evolved into birds! Blew my mind! Poppet mainly likes going through the books and labelling all the dinosaurs as "good" or "bad". Most are bad.

I hope this dinosaur interest continues as I would love to watch The Land Before Time again!

Birdseed & Diggers

I picked up a bag of bird seed from Poundland with the intention of one day making these yoghurt-pot bird cakes but in the meantime I thought it might make a good sensory play ingredient. I put it out with Poppet's digger and truck outdoors on the Tuff Spot during a lull in the sunshine.

We borrowed a digger book from the library recently so Poppet is quite well versed in digger vocabulary - she can point out the 'boom' and the 'bucket' and loves comparing the digger's 'elbow' to her own. She also does cute engine noises when she drives it around.

She enjoyed filling up the digger with seed then emptying it into the truck to drive away somewhere, when I quizzed her on where it was going it was as ever "to buy pizza". Everyone is always buying pizza. Sometimes "man" was "going to shops" and sometimes man was "sleeping" on top of the seed.

This was a lovely little quiet activity that kept her engrossed for a wee while. It was also really good for those important fine motor skills as she tried to pick out only the black sunflower seeds.

She took the truck to make a delivery of seed to her own little garden too. I hope to pick up some more construction vehicles (these ones were just from the charity shop so I am keeping my eye out!) and do this more using different materials as she really enjoyed it.

Poppet: 2yrs 6 mos

Little: 9 mos

Flour Play

This was a really simple activity to set up and one that went down really well. 

I put a pile of flour in the middle of the Tuff Spot along with some cars and aeroplanes and by the time I grabbed the camera the girls were already investigating it.

Poppet soon discovered that the wheels made tracks in the flour and she had fun creating roads, then I showed her that you could also trace shapes in the flour with your finger. She loved experimenting with this drawing 'faces' in the flour. Little was just enjoying kicking her feet in the flour and rubbing it in with her hands. Poppet clocked the fun Little was having in her bare feet and really surprised me by deciding to take her socks off too, because Little "got socks off".

Normally, Poppet is reluctant to actually get that messy when engaging in messy play, preferring to use utensils to explore the sensory material on offer, and if she does get anything on her hands or feet is usually pretty quick to ask me to "clean it!". So I don't know if there is something special about the flour that she likes, or if this is a change in her approach to messy play generally. Time will tell!

She really enjoyed the sensation of the flour on her feet and went a little crazy jumping about in it- maybe I have a tap dancer in the making! She has always liked sprinkling it everywhere when we make pastry or anything and it does feel lovely and soft to play with. I'm looking forward to finding more sensory play ingredients that she likes! 

Tea and Coffee Sensory Tray

Whenever I am queueing for a coffee (which admittedly is not often at all at the moment), I cannot resist running my fingers through the coffee bean displays that those big chains have. They feel and smell and even sound amazing. They are so deliciously tactile (I'm getting all Nigella) so I decided to use them for some sensory play for Poppet, combining them with other ingredients to create a sensory tray.

On the tray I had an empty hot chocolate tin (still smelled chocolately), a variety of fruit and herbal tea bags (taken from hotels over the years and never used!), a china tea set, a scoop and the coffee beans.

The coffee beans gave off a lovely aroma and Poppet made a beeline for them straightaway, scooping and pouring and touching, she really enjoyed playing with them. The teabags were completely ignored, she was all about the coffee!

She was so engrossed in this activity it was lovely to watch her happily explore it all while I got on with dinner. A lot of the time she helps me with making tea but sometimes I just need to get on with things and need something to occupy her.

In hindsight, this is an activity that would have been better placed on the TuffSpot as the coffee beans got everywhere. You live and learn!

A few days after this, Poppet was having breakfast in a cafe with her daddy and impressed him by correctly identifying 'toffee!' when she found a pot of coffee beans on their table.

Poppet: 2yrs 5mos

Little: 8mos