Shells - Rock Pool Small World

I decided to swap around our sensory box the week before half term, we decided that a beach theme would be good, but as I'd just cleaned I didn't want anything as messy as our last beach small world! So we got out all of our shells. Most of our shells we have collected during various beach trips. But I bought the big 2 at a car boot sale a few weeks back for 50p! Then we used a blue ice cream tub filled with some water to make a rock pool. We decided that our Playmobil people, that came with the swimming pool that Joseph got from Santa for Christmas, would be perfect as they have their costumes on ready for paddling!

Rice & Tubes - Adding another dimension to the sensory box

So when I saw an amazing sensory box from Frugal Fun For Boys on my Facebook feed I pinned it immediately. While I was pinning it the boys caught sight and wanted one of their own. A couple of hours later I decided to have a look around to see if we had enough bits to make a more basic quick DIY version.

Quick Polar Small World Box

I realised that I hadn't made the boys a small world box since our Halloween one! We have been so wrapped up in Christmas since then that the time has flown by. So I decided to put something together quickly after school for the boys to play with. As I had a new pot of white play dough to hand we decided on a snowy polar theme. I do often make play dough but Joseph (5) was given a really big set a couple of years ago & I keep finding new pots at the back of the cupboard! If I'd had chance I would have added some silver glitter to make it even more snowy like the play dough i made for our Arctic Week, Group Messy Play.

So at the bottom of one of our sensory boxes I taped a piece of silver rip stop fabric I had, (but silver foil would also work well) to represent the frozen water. Put the snowy play dough on one side & some white decorative stones on the other side. I also have a piece of foam packaging that looks like an iceberg.

 

We grabbed a few of our polar animals (polar bears & penguins) so they could have a play in our showy world. The play dough was perfect for they animals to make footprints in. And if any of the animals needed rescuing Joseph made sure that Spiderman was on hand!

It didn't hold their attention as long as some of our more messy boxes as but it was quick & mess free. Just before tea was ready I put the play dough back in its pot so we can easily get this box out again soon & add some more of our animals.

(Please only use age appropriate materials for your child, as small items could be a choking hazard)

x Jo x

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Halloween Messy Play

We had our Halloween Messy play session on Monday, with the weather being very wet we were quite busy! So much so i didn't get chance to take many pics.

Lots of fun was had by all & I know its a bit late for sharing Halloween ideas, but could be good for next year....

Bottle Ghosts

Decorating Pumpkins & using scissors to cut features

Spiders & Webs

Orange Jelly & Pumpkin Seeds

Sensory box

Orange & Blackish Spaghetti

Play dough Station & 1/2 a pic of the soft toy pool!

Floor Painting

When we got home I had lots of toys which needed a wash so I set the boys up with a bowl of soapy water & got them to give me a hand. They enjoyed this as much as our Lego wash & yes they did need a change of clothes after!

x Jo x

Halloween Crafts & Sensory Fun

Following on from our Top 20 Halloween Crafts & Messy Play Ideas post we have been getting everything ready for our 1/2 term group messy play session. We've decided to make bottle ghosts, spider webs, & spiders. We will also decorate some paper pumpkins but I'm yet to prep for this! 

I'm collecting & washing lots of bottles ready for our ghosts. We will be filling them with cotton wool then sticking on eyes & mouths that I've cut out of sticky back felt. I'm also saving our milk bottles to make ghost decorations for Josephs party, by drawing on the face with a permanent marker pen.

 We have lots of wool scraps here courtesy of the boys Grandma, so a paper plate spider web was a great way to use some up! I've got a stack of paper plates (large & small) which I have punched lots of holes in, ready for a length of wool to be tied on & threaded around to make a web. These webs look great with small plastic spiders, but i thought the kids would like to make a spider. I love this spider from Red Ted Art so to make our spiders we will be making the body from a ball of black paper (mine was A5). The legs are made from 2 pipe cleaners in 1/2, twisting all 4 pieces together & taping on underneath. I then glued some googly eyes on & decorated with some glitter glue. He looks really cute sat on a small pumpkin, which is where he is living for now :-)

Daniel (3) has been helping me get our sensory box ready for the session as well. We started out by raiding the cupboard for all the lentils, & split peas etc we used to make our Dinosaurs back in the summer, we then added a couple of packs of soup & broth mix that we picked up reduced to clear. In total our box has nearly 2kg of dried goods to make the base. We then added our collection of spiders, bugs, snakes & a small witch. We found these cute mini pumpkin buckets & eyeballs in a £ shop. I then added some co-ordinating pom poms as the boys love these & later on some scoops. Daniel has had lots of fun testing out this box for me! 

Really looking forward to both the messy play session & Josephs birthday party. However my house (&head) is full of to buy/make/do/cook lists, so will be relieved once I have pulled it all off!

x Jo x

Hungry Caterpillar Week @ Messy Play

Oops... just realised that I haven't finished posting about the group messy play sessions I ran in the summer. The next theme I chose was The Very Hungry Caterpillar so that we could cover food, leaves, caterpillars & butterfly's. In the sensory box I popped lots of popcorn, we do have a popcorn maker which made this quite easy, I think I ended up using approx 300g of corn. I then raided our toy kitchen to find all the plastic food that is mentioned in the book & added some scoops & spoons. 

This box was very popular with all the kids, we kept it made up at home the popcorn kept well & still smelt delicious 2  weeks later (though I wouldn't recommend eating any that old, it was OK to play with). 

This week instead painting on the floor I moved it up on to a table so that they could create individual paintings. I was aiming for symmetry butterfly's & sponge circles to make caterpillars. Well the kids had their own ideas and were happy to paint freely, the glitter went down well :-) Joseph (4.5) wanted to make a butterfly so I drew out the shape on half the paper to help him (bottom left pic).

For some floor art I taped some black paper down for chalking. I did have more paper to hand in case they filled it up, but the chalk rubbed away by hand so their was no need. I must remember to do this in the kitchen for the boys on a rainy day!

Using left over coloured pasta from the previous week we made some caterpillars, with pipe cleaners & eyes. This is great for little ones that struggle to thread on to string.

 For the other areas we had:

• Ball pool
• Leaf pool - Selection of leaves and pine cones. I used lots of different leaves including bay & mint to add some scent.
• Button & cotton real threading - which created some nice caterpillars

As usual we had a baby / quiet area, which included the book & a butterfly toy.

At the end of the session I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

x Jo x

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Top 20 Halloween Messy Play & Craft Ideas..

Joseph has always liked Halloween & as his birthday is just a few days later, he has asked for a Halloween party. He will be 5 this year & as he has enjoyed our group messy play sessions so much over the summer we will be having a messy Halloween party! I don't want anything that will stain as I don't want to ruin anyone's costumes! I'm also running another group messy play session in October half term so will be using lots of the same ideas. 

Shaving Foam - The Iowa Farmers's Wife

Spider Play Dough -Taming The Goblin

Halloween Coloured Rice - Play Through The Day

Green Spaghetti - Growing A Jewelled Rose

Pumpkin Gloop - Growing A Jewelled Rose

Spooky Jelly Play - Nurture Store

Lentil Sensory Box - Creative Playhouse

Orange & Black Water Beads - Le Baby Bakery

Spider Web Threading - There's Just One Mommy

Cotton Wool Ghost Bottles - No Time For Flash Cards

Lentil Pumpkin Craft - Crack Of Dawn Crafts

Paper Bag Ghost Puppets - Fab Mums

Loo Roll Bats - La-Dee-Da Creations

Loo Roll Monsters - Happy Hooligans

Tissue Paper Window Decoration - Jennifer's little World

Pine Cone Owls - Lady Sandra

Bottle Top Spider - Craft Town

Paper Plate Witch - Ziggity Zoom

Cotton Wool Ghost - 366 Days Of Pintrest

Cotton Bud (Q-Tip) Skeleton - Pilish The Stars

If you are looking for more Halloween ideas take a look at my Halloween Pintrest board. I have still got to gather some ideas for food & decorations so keep a look out for another post soon...

x Jo x

Tea Party Week @ Messy Play

For our 4th week of messy fun I decided to go for a tea party theme, mainly so we could do some cupcake decorating! So that's what we did, I bought 3 dozen ready made cupcakes from the supermarket (didn't want to be poisoning any kids) & lots of sprinkles & sweets to decorate. In the hour we used almost a box of icing sugar & I spent most of the session mixing icing. The kids decorated all the cakes & then moved on to the pack of biscuits I brought as back up :-) It was a really busy session, & I didn't get chance to take any pics of the set up & not many during the session.

I dyed the pasta left from animal week, using the same method I use   a little bit of food colouring & some surgical spirit (rubbing alcohol for those in the us) in a zip lock bag. Mix it around to cover the pasta & add more colouring if required. I've previously had poor results using the natural colouring vs regular, as i was out of green I thought I would give the gel colouring a go. It did give better coverage however left a slightly sticky residue on the pasta. 

I supplied lengths of string so that the kids could make necklaces to wear to the 'party'. I also made some 'needles' with some pipe cleaner for the younger ones to make the threading easier.

For the sticking craft I printed out a cupcake picture & decorated using fabric, paper & foam scraps, lolly pop sticks & sequins. I had some ready coloured lolly sticks, but wanted to make sure i had enough so i tried a colouring them using food colouring at the same time as the pasta, it worked but not very well. I then used a chunky marker to colour them in this was quite quick & gave a better result. A great way to recycle all those lolly sticks you've been saving all summer.

My example cupcake (I'm having great fun doing my own pictures)

In the sensory box we had red jelly & custard.... this started out nice & thick but ended up all thin & watery as the kids mixed it.

In one of our pools we had out our tea set, with our coloured rice to use as pretend tea.

In the other pool I put a whole bag of asda value cornflakes, they had lots of fun crunching & scooping.

Daniel (3) requested that we had pink paint at messy play, so as it was tea party week, i mixed some up using our red & white paint. It ended up a peachy pink, I also mixed a purple which ended up darker than I would have liked. As well as the brushes I also cut an old car sponge out in to sort of cupcake shapes.

A fab week again with a long clean up, but worth it as all the kids love it. Especially my boys who wouldn't get to experience this otherwise. It really is different experience from doing these activity's at home.

x Jo x

P.S. The next theme is The Hungry Caterpillar