Frozen Themed Sensory Play

(4 Years)

"Really?  I'm guessing you don't have much experience with heat."
"Nope."

You can't help but sing along with the songs from Frozen- maybe because the kids sing it in the pool, while playing dress-up, in the bath, in the car.... you get the picture.

Well Frozen inspired this frozen sensory play.  We first placed a can of shaving foam in the fridge the night before to get it nice and chilly.  We then made three different colors of ice blocks- so the kids could pretend to be ice cutters (and builders) - it was supposed to be just shades of blues and purples, but I knew that Little Miss would really want pinks, so I made a batch of pinks also.  We used gel food dye, but liquid food dye and liquid watercolor works the same when making colored ice.

This type of creative play is just perfect for a HOT summer day.  They loved building and knocking down their ice creations.

Look at the concentration on their faces, so serious!  I love it!

The colored ice cubes lasted a long time in the 90 degree heat.  In fact, it lasted so long that we brought out that can of cold shaving foam that I mentioned earlier.

"Foam!"  Anna, Elsa and Olaf also joined in on the fun.  The Frozen friends were buried in snow, an ice palace was constructed (and knocked down- ooops), they went sledding and ice skating, Olaf had his dip in the water - just like he always wanted.

They had so much fun playing with colored ice in the foam, it turned the foam beautiful shades of purple, blue and pink.

Clean up is so simple- hose it all down.  The shaving foam even made their trays and toys squeaky clean.  They played with the colored ice and foam for a little over an hour - the ice stayed all that time.  If you need a fun, easy and inexpensive activity, this sensory play is perfect for that HOT summer day.  

The kids asked to play with this again, next time we are going to add in some water beads for more sensory fun.  I love how easy this is!  Happy Monday

Foamy Rainbow Ice Play

(41 Months)

We had so much fun playing with the little rainbow dinosaurs that we knew we'd be playing with rainbow ice in foam (shaving cream).  My two love swirling food dye in foam, playing with water beads in foam and finding hidden letters in foam.  I knew they'd have a ball with this!

I put four drops of liquid food coloring in each of the tiny flower cavities, filled with water and let it freeze.  The next day I filled the water table with an entire can of foam and invited the kidabunks to play.  Hee hee - we had fun!  Soft, squishy, icy cold fun.  Messy, clean 'em up with a hose - heh heh, fun.  Can we do this again Mommy?  Fun!

Rainbow Bubbles and Glow Sticks

(28 Months)

A water table is so much fun.  A water tables with bubbles is even more fun.  A water table with RAINBOW bubbles - well, it causes hiccups from laughing so hard!  This is our second time playing with rainbow bubbles, it always causes instant smiles, squeals of immense joy, and the laughter that makes your heart just melt away.

How can something so simple as food dye on bubbles create this type of incredible reaction?  It's been said that "it's all in the little things", well that's definitely true.  To make a rainbow bubble table, we poured in about three big squirts (tablespoons) of bubble bath (from The Dollar Tree), then used the hose to make the bubbles nice and frothy.  The kidabunks chose their liquid food dye colors and began squeezing the bottles and making little droplets of color on the bubbles.  We played for awhile.  Then we tossed in a couple of glow sticks and glow bracelets into the water (the water turned a deep dark purple from all the food dye that the kidabunks added).  I wasn't able to get any good pictures of the glow sticks under the water though- I really need to spend time (HA!) learning how to use my camera.  The twins loved "diving" for glowing treasure.  We started out fishing for glowing treasure, but Wild One started flailing around the toy fishing pole and Little Miss was not happy with all the splashing.  

The dye makes the bubbles so pretty - it does temporarily dye skin (it washes off in the tub though).

 For some reason he didn't want to put down his squeeze bottle while playing with the bubbles.

We needed to make a new bubble table, because we lost most of our bubbles when we were splashing.    Which was all good for Little Miss because she convinced her brother to make a Pinkalicious bubble table this time.

Little Miss has a serious look on her face as she watches her brother pick up the hose- she doesn't like being squirted and splashed with water .  She's so concerned about what her brother is doing that she didn't even notice that she was pouring pink bubbles and water all over herself!

Wild One made a huge pink foam cupcake, but by the time I grabbed my camera he poured it out onto the palm tree in the background.  He said the palm tree was hungry.

Potty Training Wild One (Day Three) & Fun with Shaving Cream

(26 Months)

Little Miss has been asking to sit on the potty.  Now, I know, and she knows, that the only reason she's asking to sit on the potty is because her brother is on the potty.  Yes, we're at that stage of 'whatever he has must be better than what I have'.

Today, my plan was not to remind Wild One at all to use the potty.  I wanted to let him fully realize (even if he doesn't make it to the potty on time) when to go.  That was my plan.  However, while recognizing that he obviously has to pee, I was only able to hold out for about five seconds before asking if he would like to sit on the potty.  He did wind up going on his own four times, but the rest of the time either Grandpa or I prompted him.

Are you ready for this?  The little stinker (ha! another poop pun) held out until 10:10 before pooping today, a full extra half hour of agonizingly waiting and watching and following him around with a paper towel.  We kept asking him to sit on the potty, sometimes he would, sometimes he ran the other way.  He had a miss before he pooped, probably because he didn't want to sit on the potty.

After he pooped, aaahhh, it was time to set up the water table for some bubble fun.  They really enjoyed making bubbles, scooping bubbles and trying to blow the bubbles off their hands.  While they were taking their naps, I decided when they woke up it was going to be serious messy messy time.  I broke out the shaving cream, paints, markers and the big roll of butcher paper.

This was our first exposure to playing with shaving cream.  There are so many wonderful activities that I'm looking forward to doing with shaving cream, but we don't have all of the necessary materials yet. So I decided to let them first get used to playing with the white, fluffy, creamy, squishy, stuff (or as Little Miss calls it, "the white").  We said good bye to the bubbles in the water table and then the kids took turns shaking the shaving cream bottle (on sale at Target for 97 cents), and then it was playtime.  I squirted the shaving cream into the lower basin of the water table and onto their hands.  Then we hid some of their smaller toys in the shaving cream and tried to find them by scooping piles of cream away with play spoons and spatulas.  They made train tracks and drove their trains around, they had their little fish swim in the soft foam, they carried piles of the foam from the water table to a bucket of water that I had set out for them (just in case we had a melt down and didn't like the foam on our hands or toys- which didn't happen).

 As you can see they got the foam EVERYWHERE.

The shaving cream was lots of fun.  I know we'll be doing that again- I love those free form activities.  Here's some shaving cream, a bucket of water and some tiny toys, have fun!

We then decided it was time to paint.  We mixed together the primary colors to make orange, green and purple (we add white to our purple, because Wild One calls it black because the purple is so dark), and then Little Miss loves pink so we made some pink.  It's amazing, we've made color blends dozens of times and every time I get the same enthusiastic reaction "wow Momma, that's _____ (fill in the color)!"  I love it, I hope they are always this easy to impress.

In the second picture (above), Wild One was painting and said, "look Grandpa a letter D!"  

I don't know if he meant to paint a D or he was noticing that the shape looks like a D.  

Now, he's painting a boy.  

 He decided to paint shoes on his feet and then put paint on his hands to make hand prints.

While the paint dried, they took Grandpa on a picture walk 

through a photo album of our vacation.

Then out came the markers to add those finishing touches to their paintings.

Little Miss has been experimenting with drawing with more than one marker at a time.

We were really messy, and it was hot out, so out came the hose.  The squeals of delight that came from Wild One were priceless.  He was so happy, especially when he started saying, "wet Grandpa".  

 

Naked time potty training has been a lot of fun.  It's pretty much play all day outside from 7 until 5 (except for our nap), try unsuccessfully not to remind Wild One about sitting on the potty and that's about it.  Tomorrow we are going to introduce Wild One to underwear (after he poops).  I have a feeling this is where it is going to start to feel like potty training (then of course we'll work our way to getting fully dressed, start taking short walks and then a quick trip to the store).

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