Water play

After the ladybird's lack of interest in edible finger paint I decided to go with an old favourite the next time I set up an activity for her.

 She loves going swimming, baths and water play in general. The only thing she doesn't like is showers!

We bought her a sand & water table for her first birthday & she spent lots of time happily splashing about in it last summer.

Since the summer ended we've not done much water play (except bath time) so I decided it was time to restart.

I set it up a plastic under bed storage box that I bought for messy play (I dream of owning a tough spot one day though) on the kitchen floor. I added some blue food colouring to the water and some ice cubes and a couple of scoops/tea cups. Then I stripped her down to just her vest, as I knew from previous experience she would try and climb in to the box!

She surprised me by not being bothered by the coldness of the ice cubes at all. She happily played with them in her hands and added them to a scoop before pouring them back in to the water.

Once the ice cubes melted I added a squirt of washing up liquid and a whisk (inspired by this post from The Natural Momma in me).

She loved it as I expected and spent almost an hour whisking, splashing and pouring the bubbly water.

 As predicted she climbed in to the box but to be honest I am surprised at just how long she played before she climbed in.

An activity that will definitely be repeated.

Edible finger paint

The ladybird is still at the stage where she puts everything in her mouth but I want to start doing more creative activities with her so I decided to give edible finger paint a try.

One nap time I followed the directions on The imagination tree for edible finger paint and allowed the paint time to cool. I found that I had to make the paint in a pan over a low heat in order for it to become the correct consistency. I divided the paint between 4 Tupperware boxes and add a different food colouring to each.

After nap time, I put the ladybird in her highchair, in a wipe clean bib. I put a bit of each colour paint in front of her and tried to encourage her to play including playing with it myself. She was very reluctant to touch it so I added in her paint brushes but still she showed very little interest.

 I stored the paint in the fridge for a few days and tried again a couple of time but she never showed any interest. When I mentioned it at nursery they said she loves doing hand printing with poster paint. They also mentioned that she doesn't seem very interested in their sensory play sessions when they use toothpaste or shaving foam.

I would definitely recommend this edible paint recipe to other parents but I won't be trying it with the ladybird again for a while! I'm already thinking up different ways to create and play with the ladybird that suit her preferences. Play should be fun and at just 18 months she obviously isn't ready for anything too messy.

Halloween jelly sensory play

For Halloween this year I decided to set up a very simple sensory play for the ladybird.

The night before I made an orange jelly as directed on the packet and set it in the fridge overnight. I lined the container with cling film so it came out of the container easily. Then on Friday I simply tipped it out in to a bowl, added some Halloween cookie cutters (plastic & with no sharp edges), a spoon, a second smaller container & a large spider sweet.

The ladybird enjoyed exploring the cookie cutters at first but she seemed reluctant to touch the jelly. We talked about the different shapes (cat, witches hat, pumpkin etc) and sang incy wincy spider using the spider jelly sweet.

Next I transferred some of the jelly to the smaller container and we sang wibble, wobble jelly on a plate. Having the jelly in a smaller tub seemed to catch the ladybird's attention. She explored the jelly cautiously with her fingers and soon decided to eat a few pieces. At this point she started to get more interested in the jelly and also the jelly spider. Once the ladybird is past the put everything in your mouth stage I would like to set items in the jelly for her to dig out such as plastic spiders for halloween.

The ladybird sat and played with this for a good ten minutes before getting up and walking off. During the day we also enjoyed reading Julia Donaldson's room on the broom, various Mog and Meg books & dancing around to Halloween songs on youtube.