Monster Slime Mess



Gelatin Play is a new play material we have been experimenting with lately. This messy play was put together the night before by simply mixing gelatine powder, hot water and food colour. I used a star-fish snack tray and filled it up with some small plastic animals and put it in the fridge to set.

 

I put it on the glass table, set it out with some utensils and let Dimples go for it. Lets see where it lead us. As usual I love his imagination, today is was monster Slime. For a while it was Alien Poo but he kept coming back to monster slime.

He squished it through his fingers, and crushed and crushed and crushed it until the rubbery mass turned into a slippery slime. It made some pretty awesome sounds as he squeezed it in the palm of his hand and pushed it into the circular part of the tray. These 'fart' sounds were quite humorous to him, he was in hysterics making all sorts of sounds. Monster Farts he would exclaim in giggling fits of laughter.

With a knife and fork he cut some up, of course it was easy to cut but this task required lots of concentration and control. Hand eye co-ordination as he sliced it, holding the knife upright and then practising using a big spoon, scooping it all up and pouring it back into the dish.

He played for a good 40 minutes just experimenting with the texture, squishing it around and burying his hand under it. The only rule he had was to keep it on the table (he almost succeeded in this) it was quite a mess so be warned, but he done well and enjoyed the mess for much longer than I had expected.

I grabbed out a paper towel roll tube and gave it to him without instructions or any ideas and he did exactly as I expected. Used it as a tunnel and poured the slime through it.
Dimples experimented with gravity for a while, filling it up while it was level and then tipping it up and watching it all pour through.  He did get a little wild for a moment, as I was in the kitchen I turned around to see him doing a helicopter motion above his head with the tube and a trail or goo flying out. After I reminded him of the rules he didn't do it again and continued playing

More squishy sounds, more giggles and more imaginative stories. Alien slime, monster slime, an Aliens toilet, this dropped out of their space ship- Aliens must eat sharks and ocean creatures for dinner! The things he comes up with when he gets on a roll amuses me.

 

 Mixing, stirring, pouring, scooping, squishing and slicing up the slime. It went on for another 20 minutes as he used his utensils and by that time the slime had turned into more of a liquid. Then he made what he told me was a clock, a circular pattern in the slime by twisting the tube around. Dimples played around drawing through the liquid slime and making patterns through it on the glass table. Thankfully after he was done, he happily helped me clean it all up. Give him some clothes and a spray bottle and he will clean up just about anything, but this required a mummy clean and a good bath as he had it plopped all over the front of him, on his face and all over the place.
Dont let this put you off though, it was one of the most enjoyable activities he has done in a long while and he kept with it for longer than usual. The food colour doesnt stain and it is really easy to clean up as it doesnt dry on any surface.

Happy Adventures :)

Mining for jewels

Ever heard of smurf village for I-pad?  I have it, I love the smurfs. They're so cute, it's a bit like FarmVille & those games on Face book (that I've never got into) but with smurfs they grow crops of fruit, bake cakes and build a hidden smurf village.  In my smurf village I have miner smurf and a game where you mine with a pick, finding gold, silver, rubies and jewels in rocks....
Dimples loves it, he always asks if he can check my smurf village just so he can mine for Jewels,  this was the inspiration for the mining activity I put together for him!



Using a small chisel and hammer, dimples mined for treasure just like mining smurf.  Days in advance I prepared his rocks using homemade play dough that had almost had its day. I got a palm full of dough and inserted a lucky stone, a pretend jewel, a marble or a foam shape in the centre and rolled it in so it was completely covered. once I had a dozen I put them on the window sill to dry!



After a few days of full sun, the dough rocks were hard all the way through and ready to be mined.
Miner dimples used his chisel and hammer to chip away at the rocks until he found a jewel. He told me he would mine out a crown for me as this is the highest scoring treasure in the smurf game that we haven't been able to find!  Unfortunately for me there were no crowns but he enjoyed mining the hidden jewels and imagining what could be.

 

 

 

 

My little miner found some treasures, cleaned them off & put them away in his treasure box.  It was good fun and a good activity for pretend play, imagination, hand/eye coordination & spatial concepts. Not to mention messy outdoor play



Happy Adventures  :)

Rainbow Gelatin Exploration

Jello, jelly, gelatin its all the same to me.
Its a cool sensory material that never gets boring.
Have you ever used it in play?

 

 

This was our first attempt of gelatin using the jar of powered gelatin and the colours of the Rainbow.
I can announce that we will definitely be trying it again, in bigger better ways....

 
Just the way it jiggles, shakes and wiggles, the smooth texture and the sense of the cool temperature on the tips of your fingers is enough for any child to want to play with it (and adult).

 

I prepared some colourful sheets of jelly using gelatin, all it needs is to be heated (not boiled) and dissolved in water and then add some food colouring and let it set in the fridge. I just poured a cup of individual colours on cooking paper in a tray the night before, not knowing whether it would work or not. Success! I'll have to get more of this stuff, that was so simple.



Dimples and his best buddy explored the wriggly texture of the jelly with their fingers pretending to mix and cook with it. They used measuring cups to "measure" it and some plastic knives and forks to slice it in to pieces.
























Funnily enough, they held the bigger thicker pieces up to the light shaking and wobbling them, laughing at the funny movements it made. They experimented with tearing it up, squishing it between their fingers, chopping it with the knife and squashing it into a bowl pretending to make each other dinner. Mmmmmm Yum flavourless gelatin for dinner.



The gelatin is very fun used this way, its thicker and more pliable than your usual eating jelly, it is more like rubber and handles more from the playful preschooler than any jello would. It doesnt turned liquidy either, it stays in clumps and lasts much longer.
The boys tried mixing it and blending it together but the only success in that was making smaller pieces and more of a mess. They had a ball splatting it about and mucking around with it.



After the rainbow fiesta of wiggly wobbly fun, they piled it all back on to the tray and helped me clean it up like little angels......
That was until we arrived at the park later in the day and they were giggling and pointing at me, to their amusement I found the tiny rainbow chunks of jello they had put in my hair while i was down under the table and chairs trying to clean up.
Little Angels :)

Bolt Sorting, Matching & Stacking

Like all little boys Dimples loves anything that Daddy fiddles with in the yard. He is always keen to explore the shed, pretend to mow the lawn, build and fix things like Daddy does and play with tools. This bolt & nut play was perfect to keep him occupied on a beautiful sunny day as we tinkered around the yard.

This little activity is so simple and fits perfectly with role playing Mr. Fix it and with an extra learning bonus it offers some practise in fine motor skills, cognitive development in focus & attention, sorting by shape, length and by size, matching and stacking by size.



I started with a collection of different sized bolts and washes. A few different widths and a few different lengths, all with matching ends, Some had multiple ends. Just to make it interesting I added a padlock and keys in to see if Dimples could master it and find the right Key without guidance.



Dimples stacked the nuts up, it took alot of focus and concentration to do so.
Through cause and effect he learnt that he needed to stack it up with the large pieces on the bottom, decreasing to the smallest on top for the best and most stable stack of nuts.



He Balanced the bolts up on their ends. Balancing and sorting them from smallest to largest. Putting them all in a row and making a "fence".
Dimples matched the bolts to the right size nuts and had to concentrate on using his fine motor skills to twist and turn the nut up evenly onto the bolt without stripping it or getting it jammed.
He fiddled around experimenting on which way the nut goes depending on which way he spun it, up the bolt or back down.



Then came the Key, this was tricky. Dimples found the right key, at first it didn't fit so he turned it around and it didn't fit, after a few wiggles he got it in. The he had to manipulate it to hold on the padlock with one hand and turn the key in the correct direction with the other to pop it open.
He threaded some of the washes on to the padlock and lined it up, pushing it locked again.

 

 

 

Something so simple that we take for granted. I had never really considered the skills it takes to unlock a padlock or thread bolts. To a growing and learning mind of a 3 year old who has never opened a padlock before or had to use such focused fine motor skills, this is a huge accomplishment!

Glowing dragon Eggs by the Hulk

The story of the Glowing Magical Baby Dragon Eggs made by my Baby Hulk.

As you may have noticed I have been doing a bit of experimenting with glowing play for Dimples to explore. We started with glow baths and bath paint made from shaving cream and highlighter ink. We have made Glowing playdoh, substituting the water with glow water, and I made some glow spaghetti yesterday. This time we made some glowing water beads.

Through this experimenting I have found that yellow and green Neon highlighters work the best.

We made the water beads by using hydrated ones and soaking them for 18 hours in glow water (highlighter ink & water). It has been done before in the blogging world, but for us it was new & it was a success. We did Clear beads in yellow ink, green beads in green ink and some Orange in orange highlighter ink (the ones that aren't as vibrant are the orange ones).

We put them in a tray and used a bit of the glow water mixed in a zip lock bag with some shaving cream.  Dimples then poured this in over the beads and mixed it into a big glowing mass of fun.

Using some clear containers with lids he filled them up and shook them round so the entire container was a glowing tube. He experimented with site perception, shaking it quickly and watching the blurred trail in the dark. (We had an almost pitch black room).

He discovered after a while that he was also glowing, his hands and finger nails were glowing under the black light. He told me this meant he had turned into a monster!  The green Hulk Monster.

Hulk Alert, Dimples has turned into a glowing Hulk :) 

Or is he radioactive?

The radioactive glowing Dimples did some pretend cooking. He Made me some magic berries but then suddenly they were magic baby dragon eggs.  So he went with this for a while, helping to "hatch" baby dragons out of the magic glowing eggs, telling me what colour each one was. I love his imagination!

He had lots of fun filling up jars and cups then shaking them around and holding them towards the light, then hiding them so they weren't glowing but mostly he enjoyed crushing them into oblivion and making a huge slushy mess.

If you have missed our glowing Adventures, click on the Glowing Fun Tab under my header for more ideas.

If you have never tried using black light play, start here glowing-bath-play where you will find a link for how to make & use it :)

First you will need a Black light globe that you can get from your local hardward or lighting store. You can purchase fandango ones online that are enclosed but they are costly, we got our Black light globe for $13 and use it in a lamp with the ahde taken off. While in the Bath, I replace the globe on the ceiling light and it works just as good :)

Happy Adventures