Love, Laugh and Learn

…But I thought I would share it anyway!

This post about sensory salt on the Imagination Tree caught my eye a while ago, but it got carried over on my ‘to do’ list for a couple of weeks until we finally got around to it!

Looking back at the pictures on my laptop now, the sensory salt looks lovely and pink, but for some reason when I read the post on my phone, I thought it was purple so in my wisdom, I decided to try and mix my own purple food colouring. This may be where my troubles began!

We love a malleable or sensory experience, and since Annabelle has begun exploring letters, we thought we would try sensory salt for some mark making. All we needed was salt, lavender oil to add an enticing scent, food colouring and a Ziploc bag to mix it up in.

I decided to try and make the salt purple (to match the lavender smell!) so I mixed a tiny bit of blue into some red food colouring, and added a couple of drops of water to loosen it up. The liquid looked dark, but definitely purple, so we tipped this into the bag with salt and a couple of drops of lavender oil, zipped it up and prepared to shake shake shake! Annabelle shook the bag, squished it around and squidged the big lumps. Then she stopped, and looked at me with a confused expression and said “Not purple Mummy, this green”. I decided that maybe it just wasn’t mixed enough so we kept on shaking but it was pretty clear that our salt was never going to be purple! I have no idea why it turned green, but it smelt lovely!

When ready, we tipped the salt into a tray lined with foil, as suggested on the Imagination Tree, and it did look lovely as Annabelle swiped the salt to reveal the shiny surface underneath. The sensory salt felt much nicer than I imagined – for some reason, I thought this would feel gritty and rough but it was actually smooth and pretty soft.

Annabelle enjoyed scooping the sand and running it between her fingers for a while, then we made some slithery snakes, crocodile teeth, bouncy balls (wiggly lines, zig-zags and circles!) and letter shapes. These mark-making activities always work best with just a small amount of the sensory material, otherwise the marks are difficult to see if the salt/sand/flour etc is too thick. We used about half of the salt, and topped it up as necessary (expect some spillage!).

Making bouncy balls!

Overall Annabelle enjoyed our green salt, so I would definitely try sensory salt again, but maybe with liquid food colouring and not try to mix my own colour!