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! 

Messy Play - Jelly Smash!

It looks like summer has finally arrived! Today has been gloriously sunny so we took the opportunity to  engage in some messy play outside, introducing Poppet and Little to the sensation and texture of jelly!

I had a few farmyard animals and a shell suspended within the jelly, and I also gave them various tools that they could use to explore it. It looked very jelly-fish like sitting there and Poppet spent quite a while just poking at it to see it wobble!

She liked nudging the jelly with the wooden spoon in order to free some of the animals. Little got stuck in with her hands as usual. 

Poppet's weapon of choice was the toy mallet and she spent the rest of the time bashing the jelly up into pieces. Little by this point had figured out that it tasted good.

Poppet also liked eating it. I even gave it a taste.

  Little preferred to use her feet and legs to mash up the jelly. While eating it. She is multi-talented.

Two sticky, happy babies then had a paddling pool bath (£1 from Poundland!) to clean off. I think this was Little's favourite part.

Poppet: 2yrs 4 mos

Little: 8 mos

Painting Indoors with the Tuff Spot

Poppet has been poorly and requested to do some painting, so we got out the Tuff Spot and laid out her painting bits and bobs along with some clean sheets of paper. There were various brushes and roller type things along with foam stamps (which never look like they are supposed to incidentally), straws, cotton buds, a toilet roll holder, a yoghurt carton and a helicopter (there was paint with various toy cars at her toddler club the other week and she loved making patterns with the wheels).

She started with a bit of loo roll printing and we talked about the circles that it made.....

She was more keen to get a bit mucky this time and started painting her hand with a cotton wool bud. I am glad that she is starting to embrace messy play even though she is a bit of a clean freak at heart. The benefits of messy play are that it introduces the toddler to new sensations and textures, develops their imagination and creativity, helps them discover patterns, and teaches the child that there is a time for mess (and that time is not when you are 15 and I have told you to put your washing away!).

She enjoys when I draw around her hand so this time I used a small brush to paint around her hand, she loved this, keeping very still and drooling in concentration a lot! I guess it must feel quite tickly and nice. She also really liked painting using the helicopter wheels. I really need to pick up some more wheeled vehicle toys as she really enjoys painting like this.

She tried to blow the paint using the straws (I was very clear to her that you can't suck, only blow), but it was too thick..... one day I'll do this with watered down paints as it makes interesting paintings.

She had a great morning and forgot she was ill at all!

Of her own accord she tried out some hand print painting again, no encouragement needed from me this time! She really enjoyed squishing her hands about in the paint and kept her hands there for ages, and did a few really clear hand prints on the paper ( once I told her she needed to do it quickly, down then up).

She did get pretty much covered in paint, but jammies were put straight into the wash and she had a quick 2 minute wash-down in the bath and she was right as rain. The tuff-spot contained the paint really well aside from a couple of little splatters on the floor. It really made painting much easier for us.

Hand and Foot Painting

We tried out our Tuff Spot outdoors for some hand and foot painting the other day. Once again Poppet needed some encouragement to get messy! I gave her paper plates with paint on, toilet roll tubes and cones for printing with, and white sheets of paper weighted down with stones.

She isn't very smiley doing this kind of thing, takes it very seriously. She had a go at it but wasn't overly enthusiastic!

The highlight was, I think, getting to clean up afterwards! Although she did manage to put her slippers back on and cuddle Little before I brought the basin of water out.

Poppet doing what she loves best, washing.

Spaghetti Messy Play

This was our first ever messy play activity in our Tuff Spot. I first read about Tuff spots over on Edspire and was inspired to get one as part of the messy play legacy of Matilda Mae, a beautiful 9 month old little girl who was taken from her family too soon. Hopefully it will encourage us to engage in more messy play and make lovely messy memories.

They are great for messy play activities indoors and outdoors, making cleaning up a lot easier!  I cooked up a batch of cheap spaghetti, dyed it green and put it on the tray along with a selection of things - a yoghurt bucket, tongs, dustpan, knife, doctor's scissors things, a car, horse and mini wok.

Now I should probably mention that Poppet is not the biggest fan of getting messy! Even as a baby she didn't like her feet in grass or sand, and hates having 'dirty' hands. She was quite cautious when faced with the pile of spaghetti but was definitely curious..... Anyway I left the room for a second and when I came back Little had a pile of spaghetti on her head that I am pretty sure she didn't put there by herself so Poppet must have overcome her fear.

Little displays none of her older sister's mess aversion and got stuck in. Everything goes into her mouth at the moment. Poppet was really concerned about this, shouting "don't eat it it's dirty!" at her.

Poppet preferred using the utensils to pick the spaghetti up, and fill the bucket with. She really hated it if any spaghetti got stuck to her feet and wanted it taken off immediately. We talked about what it felt like and decided it was 'cold' and 'very sticky' and 'not nice'. Fair enough!

She finished up by making dishes and plates of spaghetti pizza and spaghetti pie and spaghetti cake.

Poppet: 2yrs 4mos

Little 7 mos