Spring Play Dough: An Invitation to Play

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Play dough is a staple amongst ECE educators.  It's a great tool for imaginary play, exploration, and helps to build-up the fine motor skills needed for writing.  It's also cheap to make.  I often use this no cook recipe from The Imagination Tree. It's what I used in the picture below.  I added yellow food coloring and green glitter  to make it "springy."

 

The dollar store is a handy resource for cheap exploratory supplies.  If you are like me, and don't go often, Amazon is fantastic too (not to mention it'll be delivered right to your doorstep).  When I go to the dollar store, it takes me forever because I'm hunting for anything I can use for art and sensory activities.  It's amazing what you can find, especially amongst the seasonal items.  And the containers!  So many cute ways to present invitations to play/explore as well as for storing said objects.

For this particular invite, I set out the homemade play dough, sparkly Mini Styrofoam Eggs, silk flowers, and plastic butterflies.  The other play dough tools are all on a low shelf for easy access.

This particular spring themed invitation allows a child to explore concepts of spring: plants/gardening, new life, insects (life cycle), and Easter (if one chooses).  This activity allows for independent play and free exploration of materials.

You may be asking, "what is an invitation to play?" and that would be a great question.  For an awesome tutorial, check out Creating the Invitation to Play on Teach Preschool and Creating Invitations to Play! on The Imagination Tree.  

If you wish to expand this activity through reading, you might try:

 

Valentine Playdough

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I love Valentine's Day.  Not because of the candy (but I do love candy!), but because of all the fun things you can do with kids.  There are no shortage of props you can purchase for inexpensive that can enhance any activity.  The dollar store is full of fun items to craft with, add to playdough, or use to create a fun sensory bin.  Valentine activities can be used all month long and is a wonderful way to teach kids about the heart shape and the colors red, pink, and purple (and how you mix those colors).  

Playdough is quite popular in our house.  My youngest (of 3) benefits from 13 year of collecting supplies, cookie cutters, and various tools which she can enjoy with her playdough.  I always have some on hand or am ready to make it, trying different recipes along the way.  

This beautiful, rose colored playdough is a no-cook recipe from The Imagination Tree.  I added some red food coloring (less for pink, more for red), glitter, and rose oil for a complete sensory experience.

As an invitation to play, I put out the playdough, some red faux diamonds, silk roses, foam heart picks, and heart DecoPics (cupcake decoration) . Most of this stuff I purchased at the dollar store.  There were no instructions, no "you must create this..."; just a table full of tools to explore.

When you provide an open play experience, you never know what your child will create.  It's all up to them.

Materials:

1. Your favorite Playdough
2. Various Valentine type/inspired items such as flowers, gems, cupcake decorations, floral decorations, etc  

Don't forget to leave a comment about your experience.  And feel free to share your pictures on my Facebook page!

Easy Snowball Sensory Table

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A little over a year ago I moved from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay area.  It's been a big adjustment for me and the kids.  My son had to change schools (then change again when he entered a special education class at the beginning of the school year), we can no longer have a "beach day" in January because the water up here is freezing, and of course we all had to make new friends.  Boy, did I win the jackpot with that!  I've met some terrific moms since I moved which has kept me and my children active around town.  

Once of the places we visit regularly is The Duck Pond, a non-profit indoor play space in south San Jose.  Because it's non-profit, they relay on volunteers to help out during the 2 hour session they are open each day.  One of my friends was a regular volunteer and she talked me into it as well, along with another good friend.  Now we are all there at least once a week helping in various forms to keep the place running.  Over the year I've been there, it's been noticed that my talents lie with the craft projects and the occasional sensory activity.  I am extremely limited in these areas; no paint or super messy sensory items (rice, flour, sand, etc) of any kind, simply because the parents are required to be involved and many aren't.  Too much for us volunteers to have to clean up.  So, it's become a challenge for me, in a good way (keeps those gray cells working hard).   

Digging through supplies last week I came across cotton balls and styrofoam balls and the snowball sensory table was born!

Most of us, even The Duck Pond, have inexpensive water tables laying around for warmer weather.  Well, dig it out because it's not just for water!  Water tables have many uses, that I hope to explore over the coming months.  

For this table I kept it simple: cotton balls, styrofoam balls, cups, and some pretend ice cream scoops we had in our "snack shop" pretend play area.  That's it!  

When I put the table out, I had the cotton and styrofoam balls mixed together. The children quickly separated the two (sorting=math).   

Then we had all kinds of scooping going on.  Kids were scooping styrofoam balls, kids were scooping cotton balls.  Some were pretending it was snow, some pretended it was ice cream.  The smallest children enjoyed throwing the cotton balls into the air.  It was a frenzy of exploration and the parents were loving it!  

This is a perfect indoor activity for winter and rainy days.  The clean up is easy and I'm sure you have at least cotton balls and kids cups around your house to get this table going today.  Don't have a water table?  Try using a large plastic storage bin or if you want a smaller scale, use a plastic 6-Quart Storage Box (shoe box sized).

Materials:

• Water table or some sort of storage bin or large bowl.  
• Cotton balls
• Styrofoam balls (size is up to you)
• Cups and/or scoops

I hope this activity will keep your kids sane during indoor weather.  Let me know how you liked it by leaving a comment or share your photos over on my Facebook page.  

Frozen Winter Sensory Bin

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Once upon a time I made a winter sensory bin for my son and our playgroup.  It included colored rice, epson salt, and snowflake confetti.  He had a lot of fun playing in it with friends and on his own.  When we moved on to another season, I stored the sensory material to be used at a later time.  Well, it's roughly 4 years later and my youngest is 3 and loves to make a mess.  Lucky for her, I came across my stash of sensory materials and pulled out the winter bag.  

Preschools often use large sand tables for sensory materials, rotating them throughout the year.  Of course many of us have sand and water tables being stored for warmer weather, but why wait when you can use it for all sorts of play, not just sand and water.  But if you want to do a sensory bin that is easily storable, table or floor friendly, and on the smaller side, shoe box sized storage bins are inexpensive online and at Target, roughly $2.00 a piece.  

The nice thing about this sensory bin is you can keep it simple with just the rice and epson salt and add in small cups or scoops, or you can add toys like Arctic animals or 

Frozen toy figures. My daughter received some Frozen characters for her birthday so it seemed like a natural fit.  I threw in some winter type animals too.

The toys were quickly disregarded as my daughter is a feeler; she was more interested and the texture and flow of the sensory material then the imagination side of the bin.

She quickly made a game of finding the snowflakes and sorting them out next to her.

Make your own Frozen winter themed sensory bin with these materials:

• Shoe box sized plastic bin (6 quarts) or larger
• colored rice (link to recipe)
• Epsom Salt
• Snowflake Confetti
• Frozen characters and/or Arctic animals
• small cups and scoops if desired

Be creative and have fun!   Don't forget to share your pictures with me on Facebook!

  

Fun on the 4th with It's Playtime

Happy Birthday America.  Tomorrow is your birthday.  Now some of you readers may be enjoying a quite day at home, like I am, but still need to entertain your children (or at least get them away from the TV for 5 min).  Or maybe you are in charge of the neighborhood BBQ.  Either way, here are some ideas to engage your children this Independence Day.

What could be more exciting then Exploding Fireworks Paintings from Inspiration Laboratories?  Art, science and exploding baggies....AWESOME!  They also have links to other firework art/play ideas.

 This 4th of July Sensory Bin from Gift of Curiosity will keep your toddler scooping, mixing, and pouring using mostly items from around the house.

JDaniel4's Mom shared 10 4th of July Books to read with your kids.  

If you were featured this week, don't forget to grab your special "featured button."

<a href="http://messypreschoolers.blogspot.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeEYKQj4S7oHoLKfsA3PoeXgaNMJ5dxkdUxIphbmwXOlbFg78Gwl73-rT8AdMTgmqYmIJZrkJRYOqOEItkCbR_exui4YhZqLlwZaBHXhC5slGyqPScnxvq-zrQezw9-MdIUiecgW3fxKg/s1600/featured-messykids.jpg" width="150/" /></a>

These activities plus more can be found over on the It's Playtime Pinterest Board.  Happy Pinning! 

Now, on to this weeks play date! 

It's Playtime is a community and Thursday link-up hosted by:

* Rachele : Messy Kids (That's me!)

* Rachel & Holly : Quirky Momma

* Jillian: A Mom With a Lesson Plan

How to Play :

* Link up a post about a playful learning experience enjoyed by kids.

* Give us love and pop a button into your post/blog. Invite your readers to the weekly play date!

<a href="http://messypreschoolers.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VWLA7lm_Fqc/TaNHGpGSuVI/AAAAAAAAEX0/DGSvqIT7fyU/s320/RED-itplaytime.jpg" width="150" /></a>

* Stop by one of our blogs every Thursday and add your link about play. Your link will show up on each of the blogs in the It's Playtime community.

* Each week the playtime hosts will choose favorite posts to feature. (By linking you are giving us permission to use an image and link to you, if featured.)

* Be sure to visit some of the links that catch your eye. Commenting on posts that you find interesting or inspiring is a wonderful way to develop your own playful community.

By linking up you give us permission to grab a picture and feature you here, on a site we write for, on FB or Pinterest.   If we share your link, we will always credit you, send people to your original post and use only ONE photo.