Here’s a fantastic collection of fall sensory play activities for children, featuring autumn play dough recipes, ideas for fall sensory tubs, and more!
Outdoor art projects:: spray painting
Here’s a super fun outdoor art idea from the Just So Festival: using water pistols for spray painting!
Outdoor art: spray painting [Read more…]
Autumn play dough recipe: trees with pasta leaves
It’s wonderful for children to have their play inspired by nature and this autumn play dough recipe combines the colours of the season with lots of sensory textures – and lessons about the changing of the seasons.
Here’s how to dye the pasta leaves and enjoy a seasonal sensory play idea.
Garden sensory play :: petal perfume
Do you remember making petal perfume when you were a child? It’s a lovely garden sensory play idea I’m keen to pass on to my daughter.
Here’s how we made ours:
Garden sensory play :: homemade petal perfume [Read more…]
Small world play :: frog life cycle
This small world play idea combines sensory play and loose parts to explore the frog life cycle. Come and take a look at our indoor pond!
Small world play :: frog life cycle
Watch our Sensory Tub Masterclass
Click to play on the video above to see our sensory tub masterclass. You’ll learn how to make a sensory tub for your children using simple materials, the benefits of sensory tubs for children, and how to use a sensory tub to teach children about math, literacy, science and fine motor skills.
You’ll also see lots of ideas for sensory tub fillings plus find out how to get great printables to add to your tubs. Subscribe to NurtureStore’s YouTube channel to get more sensory play videos!
We’ve been rather disappointed to have found no frogspawn in grandma’s pond this year, as we really wanted a jar of it to study at home. But, we are not ones to sulk for long! We decided to take matters into our own hands and do the next best thing: create a small world pond in the play room.
I set out a towel to catch any spills and gave the children a shallow tub of water and some grass from our garden sensory tub.
And then we added in some loose parts that we thought might make good ingredients for the pond: bark, leaves, logs, pebbles. The frogs, spawn and tadpoles are part of a set from Insect Lore. We’ve included some clear water beads, which are a great sensory material and make convincing frog spawn, but I would take care with them and certainly not use them if there is any possibility of your children putting them in their mouths. We had 6 – 10-years-old playing here, but for younger children you can simply omit the water beads and still enjoy a lovely pond small world.
It’s tempting to set out the small world play scene yourself, but if you can resist let the children make it by themselves. Whether they create a realistic pond, bringing to life the science and nature study they’ve been doing, or create an imaginary land, perhaps exploring story-lines about happy frog families or frogs and princesses, it’s always interesting to sit back and observe, and get an insight into what is going on in their thoughts.
We discovered nasturtium leaves make perfect lily pads…
and that bark floats – giving our frogs a great place to hang out and tadpole-watch!
Try a small world yourself this week
If you’ve never set up a small world for children could I encourage you to give it a try this week? I’ve never met a child who doesn’t like them! And especially try one if your children are a little older (it’s my 10-year-old you can see playing here) because I think that opportunities to enjoy this kind of small world imaginary play disappears from classrooms as children get above six, seven, eight… years of age, but really they are still such a valuable and enjoyable way for children to play and learn.
Midsummer messy play :: solstice sensory tub
Today we’re enjoying some midsummer messy play with a sunshine sensory tub!
Midsummer messy play :: solstice sensory tub
Watch our Sensory Tub Masterclass
Click to play on the video above to see our sensory tub masterclass. You’ll learn how to make a sensory tub for your children using simple materials, the benefits of sensory tubs for children, and how to use a sensory tub to teach children about math, literacy, science and fine motor skills.
You’ll also see lots of ideas for sensory tub fillings plus find out how to get great printables to add to your tubs. Subscribe to NurtureStore’s YouTube channel to get more sensory play videos!
Messy play always brings a smile in our house, so we thought we’d add a little midsummer fun with a sensory tub full of sunshine colours.
I often lay out a cloth or towel when we’re setting up a messy play area, as it seems to work well to concentrate the mess in one area, and it makes clean up that much easier – just gather up the cloth and pour any stray materials back into the tub.
Today we used a gorgeous orange and gold piece of fabric.
You don’t often need to buy in things especially for a sensory tub – just use what you have.
We’ve talked recently about how important it is to have lots of loose parts available for children to use in their play, so today I just sent the kids off to hunt out anything sunshine coloured.
They found tubs, cups, cookie cutters, bottle tops and lids, paper plates and a big sponge.
I filled the tub with lemon scented rice, yellow split peas and some oricchiette pasta (left over from our autumn play dough trees).
This gave a great combination of textures to the sensory play and as all the materials are dry and uncooked, we can store them away at the end of the playing and re-use them many times.
You never know quite how the children will play with a sensory tub.
At first they often like to simply scoop and pour the materials, to enjoy the feel and sound of it.
Very often their little animal characters will make an appearance…
but today they were full of surprises, and set up ‘A Romantic Meal’ that my husband and I were invited to share!
They put flowers on the table, picked some herb salad from the garden, set out napkins and even put on some music for us to listen to. I do love my funny, creative kids!