Shredded Paper...what was I thinking?

I had a HUGE garbage bag full of shredded paper that I needed to put in the recycling bin. I thought "hey, why not play with it first? It would be great fun!" Yes, it was fun, but I learned my lesson...this is NOT an outdoor activity! Especially on a slightly windy day. Oh well, the kids had fun, that's what matters right? I poured it out in my big water/sand table and gathered different scoops and let the kids loose.

I told Lil Lady to smell it and see what it smelt like. She said it was stinky-lol!

As you can see, my driveway quickly became COVERED in tiny shreds of paper. Ugh.

Lil Lady had fun making pie and cake out of paper...here she is offering me a slice.

 

Lil Man loved taking her pie and cake and stressing her out, as usual. He thinks it's his hourly job to torture her because she makes it so easy!

The magnifying glass was lots of fun to check out the paper with. 

Getting a closer look with the magnifying glass is very important!

How big of a pile can you hold at once? 

It is lots of fun to sort and move paper shreds to fun new containers. She was making me dinner here I believe...

 

 

Overall the kids loved it, I didn't. If I do it again it will be indoor, on a tarp or something that I can easily clean up and take care any leftover runaway papers with a vacuum. It took me forever to clean up my driveway after this one! 

Storm dancing

A few weeks ago we had a fun summer storm and I wanted to watch it roll through. I sat in the garage watching it come through and the kids sat by me for a while. Then they started getting brave and ran into the driveway then right back in for cover. Lil Lady up to this point DID NOT like storms. They freaked her out due to the loud thunder and lightning. She kept begging to go in so I had to think of some fun games for her.

 

I told her that the thunder was big loud drums and that she should play along and make some beautiful music with the storm. 

 

Of course she had to pick some leaves too...

Every time the lightning hit she freaked out a bit so I got creative and told her that the sky was taking her picture and she needed to pose. I amazingly got a shot of her posing and lightning in the background! Love it!

After the storm she actually talked about how much fun it was and how she loved it. Maybe we're making some progress! I sure hope so, cuz I sure love a good storm!

Tumbling

One of the best things we have done for our sensory daughter is to put her in tumbling. It works WONDERS!!! This kid who hated moving and jumping and being off balance now thinks it's fun and practices all the time! It's amazing!

My friend teaches a tumbling class in her basement and it is great. It is very interactive and she gets a lot of one on one time. Lil Lady has been tumbling for a year and a half now (one year she did it with her preschool class but the tumbling teachers wasn't that great unfortunately!) she's making a lot more progress with the smaller, in home class.

She's learning back bends, is a master somersaulter, cartwheels, balance, fun games, dancing...it's just great.

If I had a few thousand dollars to spare I would totally invest in a at home gym! It is so much fun!

 

 

If you have a sensory kid than I highly suggest getting them starting a tumbling class! It gives them so much confidence in their own abilities and makes things that use to be scary fun and exciting!

Sensory Tub-Noodles!

The other day I was cleaning out part of my pantry and realized I had several boxes of crappy easy to make meals that had long expired. Seeing as I hadn't made them for years I opened them all up, recycled the boxes, threw out the sauces and kept the noodles for play time! Frugal right? :)
I then went to my selection of random scoops and such and pulled out a few I thought may be fun with noodles. Lil Man was making a HUGE mess when he sat/stood on a chair to play so I had him get on the table to play easier. Yup, I'm that mom. Then they each had at it scooping, pouring, shaking, dumping the noodles and rice. It didn't hold their attention as much as I'd have liked but oh well, not every sensory tub is a complete winner. Maybe I'll dye the noodles at some point for a more colorful experience. 

Paper Fort

I had a ton of packing paper laying around from a few packages I'd gotten in the mail. I was holding on to it to store decorations or what not but the kids found it and started throwing it everywhere and jumping in the piles and making a huge mess. I figured rather than get mad about it we'd stop and have some fun! We left it out in the living room for several days and daddy was just thrilled about it! ;) One night the kids convinced him to make a paper fort with them.
And he did! They were huge pieces of paper and actually worked quite well! 

 

 

I was fortunate enough to not have to enter the fort but the kids thought it was great daddy time! Where did they all go?!

 

 Oh, there they are! Daddy popped his arms up and the whole fort crashed down! Maybe he's the big bad wolf and blew it down?

So much for using it for wrapping decorations in! When we were done playing with it that week it was pretty much in shreds and went straight to the recycling bin!

Sorting Pasta

I hosted a toddler activity bag exchange last year and my project was pasta sorting. I got a bunch of different pasta's and dyed them with food coloring. Then the child can sort by color or pasta type. Lil Lady wanted to give it a try after I was done making it so I poured some out on the floor and she went to work.

She had lots of fun playing with the pasta and making piles of the different types, colors, as well as making patterns. I love it when we can tie in some learning into the play! 

 

Glow Sticks & Water Beads

Another fun activity to do with water beads is take them into a dark room and throw in some glow sticks. It makes them so much more fun to play in!
We put everything in a big bowl and then headed up to the bathroom (the only room without a window!) and turned off the lights. Lil Lady got soo excited!

If you don't have glow sticks on hand, go get some. They are awesome. We use them for all sorts of fun sensory activities. I buy mine at the dollar store by the handful! 

See how fun it looks to have them light up the beads? Pictures don't even do it justice. It makes them change color and adds a fun new dimension of play.

Just beware, your child my like to dump the beads everywhere making it quite fun to find where they bounced to in the dark! Also beware they just may want to play with this one for a very long time and bathtub edges aren't too comfy after a while! 

Squishy Baff

Have you heard about Squishy Baff? I bought some last summer at Walmart but here's a link to it on Amazon. It is pretty weird stuff. Imagine playing in a tub of applesauce that is colored. You are supposed to use it in a bathtub and let the kids play in the think goop and then you add a deactivator and it dissolves back to water. I knew Lil Lady would FREAK if we attempted that but thought we'd give it a try in a water table. I filled up the table with water then added half a package of Squishy Baff. Then we had to stir and stir until it thickened. She didn't want to help me stir it, surprise surprise. Once it was thick and goopy I plopped in some fun scoops and let the kids loose.

She was quite intrigued with it as long as it didn't touch her! See how carefully she is holding her bowl?

 

But eventually she got more brave and put her hands in and started to hold the gunk but still wasn't very comfortable with it.

 

Lil Man didn't like it at all surprisingly. He usually likes to get messy!

I left one side of the water table with plain water for her to use to rinse off as needed (which she did every time she got any on her!) but then she decided to add more water to the Squishy Baff to see what happened.

 

 

We then practiced scooping it up and pouring it in each others hands. She liked to dump it in mine more than hers. Lil Man still didn't know what to think of it!

It is a very fun sensory activity but is a bit pricey. I always use just a little of the pack so it goes a bit further and I highly doubt we will ever use it in the bathtub!