sensory play – the joy of five

Arts And Crafts, Children, Families, Family Life, Foam Play

Wintery Sensory Play

January 22, 2016January 22, 2016by thejoyoffive4 Comments

With the small amount of snow we have had this winter and the fact the number four’s theme at nursery for the next couple of weeks is ‘Frozen’ I decided to sort a wintery themed sensory play activity for this afternoon.

I took a jug of cold water and mixed with a few drops of blue food colouring, filled an ice cube tray and waited until they were frozen.

With a can of cheap shaving foam stashed away that we normally keep for bath paints I created a mound of snow and scattered the ice cubes over the top.

The longest part of prepping this activity is waiting for the ice cubes to harden. It really is so simple and number four spent ages playing around and exploring the different textures.

Who needs snow!

Arts And Crafts, Children, Crafts, Families, Family Life, Learning, Memories, Outdoor Play, Parks

Making Autumn Colourful

October 2, 2015October 24, 2015by thejoyoffive14 Comments

We may be having some fantastic weather for this time of year but Autumn is in full swing and the parks are littered with all sorts of natural materials that are perfect to take home and use to make some masterpieces with your little ones.

After spending a good while at the park tonight foraging around and making the most of the sunshine we went home and got together a selection of twigs, leaves, pine cones, acorns and conkers and took a large sheet of paper which we used to create a colourful Autumn pattern.

Next up we picked the roundest conkers we could find, painted them in different colours then placed a sheet of paper inside a baking tray and rolled them around and around to create a really pretty pattern.

Being late in the day I couldn’t stand the mess of number five joining in with the painting so a made a tray up for him containing all the items we collected plus some play dough which he happily sat poking and pushing around while the others got on with painting.

This is a great activity to get the children interested in their surroundings and using art to explore different colours and textures.

Arts And Crafts, Children, Crafts, Families, Family Life, Messy play

Lavender Scented Playdoh

August 1, 2015August 5, 2015by thejoyoffive17 Comments

After our annual trip to the lavender fields the other day I took an idea that number three had done at school and decided to make some lavender scented playdough.

I made this in the hope that it would have calming properties that would rub off on the children!! This unfortunately didn’t work but the smell was wonderful.