Our First Plants

(30 Months)

Little Miss and I were leaving Wal-Mart last week (we were there to pick up our first Kumon book, more on that in the following post), when she asked to look at plants.  She's never asked to look at the plants before.  I love that something sparked her interest, I wonder what it was though.  I let her lead the way and we leisurely looked at the various types of tropical flowers that lined the aisles of the garden section.  Then an idea struck, lets look at herbs and have a quick sensory tour.  I asked if she wanted to smell some of the plants, and her eyes lit up as she squealed "yes!"  We walked over to the herbs and I showed her how to rub a leaf in between her fingers and then smell the oil that is on her fingers.  She was amazed at how she could sniff pungent scents of cinnamon (basil), cilantro, mint, chocolate mint, rosemary and basil.  She really liked the chocolate mint - "Momma, that's chocolate!"  She went back to that plant several times.  We wound up back in the store purchasing three plants.

The next day, we painted our planters with Grandma and Grandpa.  Then the following morning, we potted our first plants!  Little Miss was so excited to show her brother how to smell the plants.  "Like this, do it like this."

Their favorite part of planting the mint, chocolate mint and basil, was spraying the plants with water.

Tomorrow, we're going to harvest a few chocolate mint leaves to make mint tea.

SCENTED Rainbow Spaghetti

(28 Months)

Dyed spaghetti is one of the most inexpensive, versatile and fun ways to practice honing our fine motor skills, while engaged in sensory play with the slippery, slimy, shiny strands of pasta.  Instead of just making rainbow pasta, we added some delicious extracts to enhance the sensory experience.  Scented rainbow spaghetti!

Easy peasy steps to making rainbow pasta:
Cook pasta according to directions, minus one minute - to make sure it's not too soft
Drain pasta
Add one tablespoon of light cooking oil to prevent sticking - we used canola oil
Swirl around the pasta with the oil
Separate the pasta into as many bowls as you want to make colors - my kidabunks chose pink, blue, yellow and green
Add six or seven drops of food dye to each of the bowls of pasta, toss to coat - the kids loved watching the pasta change into whichever color they were working with at the time.  I let them use their hands to mix the dye into the pasta, it will temporarily stain their hands though.

Now for the scents- we added 1/4 tsp of almond extract to the "pink, pink, pink" (pasta) as Little Miss calls it
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract to the yellow pasta
1 tsp of left over coffee to the blue pasta
1/2 tsp of cinnamon to the green pasta

The kidabunks loved everything about the rainbow pasta.  They loved watching the dried pasta go from hard, straight strands to the soft and pliable spaghetti.  They oohed and aaahhed as the steam rose into the air when I drained the pasta.  When I divided the pasta into the different bowls, they noticed that it was still steamy so they started blowing on it (so cute).  Wild One noticed that his "BIG" metal mixing bowl was warm, but his sister's big plastic mixing bowl wasn't (humph, leave it to the two-year old to add a bit of science to this part of the activity).  The part they liked the best was definitely the mixing in of the colors.  I'm so glad I didn't prepare this during nap time, they really enjoyed that part.  I loved when they were sniffing the pasta, and hearing the mmmmm sounds.

When it was time to play with the pasta, we cleared off the art table and their play kitchen work areas.  I set out two pots/pans for each of them, plus we put a pair of tongs in each of the rainbow pasta bowls.  They had so much fun pretending to cook, transferring it (sometimes with tongs, sometimes with their fingers sometimes with a pasta fork) from one bowl to another, mixing colors, separating strands, feeling the slippery texture of the strands, noticing that the strands break when pulled apart.  We played with the pasta for almost an hour!  An hour!  The kids smelled delicious after playing with this for so long. As you can see from the big smile, this was a H-U-G-E hit!

To store it, I placed it in ziplock bags.  The next time we play (probably tomorrow), we'll add some glow sticks and water beads.  I'm looking forward to eventually painting with the spaghetti.  Can you tell that we really liked this activity?

Spice Up Your Painting

(26 Months)

Every morning Wild One asks to "make coffee" I have a feeling it's because he likes the smell of the coffee grinds.  Maybe he likes scooping the grinds into the filter.  I don't know.  All I know is that every morning, without fail, he asks to "make coffee".

I've been wanting to do a scent-based activity for months (wow- it's actually been over a year now, where does the time go?).  I was going to make scent bottles, however I always got sidetracked for a more interesting project.  Last night I found this spice painting project and immediately took out the cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, apple pie spice, vanilla, cocoa and the jar of coffee.

Wild One tried to help me make the paints by squeezing the glue.  It was coming out so slowly when he squeezed that I wound up taking the cap off of the glue and letting him pour the glue into the mixing bowls (I tried to snap a picture, but of course now the glue started pouring out too quickly).  He liked tapping the spices into the glue containers and mixing each container.  His favorite scent was (of course) the coffee.

I love the progression of his painting.  It goes from light, little dabs of paint to full out dumping the containers onto the paper, and then came the swirling and hand painting.  It's not at all like the one I saw on Play Create and Explore, their's was this perfect segmented painting - and ours, well... it sure does smell nice.  My favorite scent creation that Wild One made was the cocoa and coffee, yum.

This is completely unrelated, here is a picture of Little Miss drawing a face on her Magna Doodle.  How awesome is this?!?