We have been having fun squashing, squeezing, squidging, and maybe even a little bit of writing!
This post was re-posted on Play at home Mom recently, and I loved the look of their ‘squishy bags’ so we made our own versions!! These were so simple to make, but they looked really effective and Annabelle still loves them after being in use for a few days.
All we used was:
1 Tub of hair gel (Sainsbury’s 26p!!!)
2 Ziploc bags
Glitter
Food colouring
We tipped about half of the gel into a bag, shook in plently of glitter, and sealed tight.
The hair gel we bought was already blue, so we didn’t add the food colouring straight away, but after exploring for a while, I thought the effect might be better if I added some extra colour – it certainly works better when the gel is darker!
Annabelle loved squishing and squeezing the bags to mix in the glitter and colour, and she helped me tape them to the patio doors to use for mark making. We made circles, A for Annabelle, dots, crocodile teeth (zig zags) and wiggly lines. She loves the way the gel all ends up at the bottom of the bag after a while, and she can spread it back up again – all the while strengthening those all important finger muscles!
Squeeze!
Smooth it out.
Thanks Play at home Mom, we love these! (Although next nime, I might try and find bags without a great big logo splashed across the front!)
Our next messy adventure was shaving foam. We have used this in school for years with the children (sprayed directly onto wipeable table tops) but I have just found a suitable tray for Annabelle to use for sensory play, so I thought we would start off with shaving foam!
Again, the shaving foam is Sainsbury’s Basics (19p I think!) and the tray is £2.99 from Home Bargains. It is meant to be a muddy boot tray, but Dave knew I was looking for an activity tray and bought us one of these. It has a bumpy surface, but as he told me “That will just add to the sensory experience”!
I squirted a big pile of foam onto the tray, mixed in a couple of drops of food colouring, and asked Annabelle if she wanted to have a go. She looked at me like I was nuts, but with some gentle encouragement, she got stuck in!
Put my fingers in there??!
At first we just enjoyed squeezing the foam, scooping it up, swiping our hands over the top, patting it to make peaks, and passing it from hand to hand. I showed Annabelle how to use her finger to ‘write’ on the tray, and straight away she told me that she wanted to write “Annabelle, Daddy’s name, Grandma and Grandad, and Dora”!
Tiny mountains!
Messy fingers!
‘Writing’
Copying Mummy!
I think our next sensory tray activity will be cornflour. It’s been too long since we had the good old cornflour out!
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