The Benefits of Small world play - Penguins in Ice and Snow

Dimples adores Penguins. He has gone through many phases with favourite toys and animals but Penguins have always remained a favourite and he loves all the Happy Feet Movies.
After Christmas was over we still had a batch of the fake Snow to play with so I threw together this Small World Sensory tub for him.

Small world play is an easy and cheap way for children to play.
You can use anything really; recycled materials, natural materials, bits and bobs that are laying around or a theme of small toys mixed with other materials. Anything that can represent the real world and that can aide in independent play.

With the Happy Feet Small World Sensory Tub Dimples played with Fake Snow, Water Beads, Real Crushed Ice & Ice cubes, Styrofoam pieces to represent ice capsules, his penguin figures, some small plastic seal animals & sea creatures and some rocks.

He played independently for a long time making up stories about his penguins.
The Ice cubes were used as stepping stones through the melted snow.
The sticks and rocks were used to build planks across melted snow.
The Styrofoam was used as ice capsules, or land for the creatures. Dimples made them "float" through the melting snow and made capsules collide together. Some of the baby penguins got stranded on the ice, crying for their dad.
Then there was a blizzard so Dimples made a cave for all the animals to be safe in.

Benefits of Small World Play:

• Builds on Imagination
• Encourages independent Play
• Sensory and tactile stimulation
• Develops story telling skills
• Encourages role-play where the child can re-enact real life scenarios or familiar experiences.
• Abstract thinking; cognition related to logic and reason as the child makes up real life scenarios and solves 'problems' in their play 
• Promotes creative thinking

Other Small world ideas we have done are:

Penguin Sensory Play

2 Ocean boxes for small world play

Echidna craft: Imaginary Australian Play

D is for digging.

Small World Sand dough Beach Play & Sea creatures

Magical Gnome garden

Happy Adventures into the New Year

Ice & Salt Reactions - Halloween Theme

Spiders in Ice castles and a Salt Melting Experiment

 

Another Halloween themed play treat. This time Dimples had a play date with his good friend Miss K. I had prepared some Ice castles (using sand castle molds) with some spooky plastic spiders and flies frozen inside.  I set out the Ice castles, some salt to help melt the formations and some coloured water with a dropper each.

 

Dimples and Miss K went to work sprinkling salt over their Ice and trying to master the squirt droppers.  Its not working, they both exclaimed slowly adding more and more salt, but it was. The salt reacts with the ice and as the ice melts it speeds up the process, so as the salty water runs down the castle is causes cavities, rifts and small trails for the coloured water to flow through. 

 

It is a slow process but it looks really cool when the colours start running down the crevices. I think these two 3.5 year olds were just a little impatient and wanted to get to the spiders straight away. They stuck with it, adding different colours on top and watching it flow down the sides. Dimples the extremist tried to speed things up by dumping handfuls of salt on top.

 

It looked vibrant and some what spooky but it wasnt what he had in mind, so he tipped amore and more colour over the top.  Slowly he seen it start to melt down the sides and he seen some spider legs poke through.  Miss K successfully removed a fly and decided to taste the ice. Hmmmm yukky she said to the salt covered ice.

 

The two friends mastered how to use the droppers and the syringe squirts by observing me and each other, Miss K found it easier to do it one handed pushing with her thumb and Dimples mastered the skill using two hands to fill the entire tube then squirting it with his pointer finger. Both got the hang of it though. This intruquit technique helps develop the muscles in the hand needed for writting skills and develops hand/eye co-ordination.

They also got a lesson on colour mixing; as our yellow and red colours mixed together we got a nice bright Halloween Orange, and the yellow and blue = Green. The friends noticed that all of the colours pooled at the bottom of the tray into a black colour.

 

Happy Adventures :-)

Rainbows in Salt & Goop

Rainbow Goop Messy Play

Dimples had a couple of friends over for a Messy Rainbow Play Date.

This is the colourful fun that they experimented with.

There were 2 Sensory boxes: One with Goop (Cornflour & Water Mix), Another with Cooking Salt.

There were spray bottles filled with Coloured Water, cups with coloured water and droppers & some plastic spoons. I pre-made some Rainbow ice specially for the salt box to.

Miss K Mastering the Double Spray.

Dimples, Miss K & Mr J got stuck into it using the spray bottles, strengthening their little hand muscles and experimenting with the colours. The goop box was first choice!

Within minutes the goop box was a Master Piece of Vibrant Rainbow Colours.

Rainbow Spray bottles in the goop.

 

Using the spoons and droppers they swished the goop around and made a discovery.

The white goop underneath was still White.

So they experimented making wiggly worm shapes with the spoons and mixing the white through the colours.

The result was some pretty cool looking patterns.

 

Rainbow ICE and Salt Sensory Box

Coloured Paper under the Cooking Salt to add to the Rainbow effect

The Salt box was a great big box of messy fun.

Dimples and his friends loved this one.

They started dripping different colours and spraying the salt.

The effect was really cool, they watched as the coloured water soaked through the salt.

Then they started getting right into it: hands in, feeling and squishing the salt between their fingers.

 Rainbow ice worked well slowly seeping into the salt and making a vibrant Rainbow box

The kids filled up cups with the salt and realised on their still goop covered hands that the salt stuck.