Valentine's ice play

Ice play is a huge hit in our house. The gap after school pick up and before tea can sometimes be a bit tricky to fill. We often crash in front of the TV but I found these silicon ice moulds a the back of my cupboard and they inspired me to  prepare some ice hearts to make a valentine's sensory box.

I added a little food colouring to colour the water when making the hearts (I was worried this might stain so put sheets down - check your food colouring first to make sure).

As both children (5 and 2) could join in at the same time it made for a calm afternoon!

We had fun touching and taking about the ice, filing a bucket and thinking about what might happen next to the hearts (melting). Dirt and boogers has done a similar activity and used jelly/ jello you can find it here.

As with all activities make sure you supervise your child adequately. Ice cubes can be a choking hazard for small children. 

Language  used: cold, shivery, melt, drip, red.

If you like ice play you might like our polar ice sensory tub / pretend play scene or our ice decorations.

Christmas wrapping sensory play

This fun sensory table is a great way to have fun with things that you'll have have lying around the house at this time of year. It's a great way to keep kids entertained before they get their presents!

I set up  a table with some Christmassy bits and bobs. I used a snack tray to separate the items out and make them look more inviting. I tried to include a range of textures (all in Christmas colours). You could include what ever you have and are happy for your child to play with. All our decorations are potentially breakable but if you had some sturdy ones you could add them too.

I covered the table in wrapping paper added some sticky back plastic (contact paper) to the table sticky side up to hold the items in place (this is an optional extra you could still play with the items without this).

The Frog then arranged and re arranged the items for ages. It was lovely to see him concentrate on an activity for a prolonged period because like most 2 year olds his attention span can be short.

He loved putting similar items (e.g. pom poms together) and then rearranging them.

** as the items in this activity are not toys please only let you child play with what you think is appropriate for their age, please also ensure they are appropriately supervised **

Language Links:
Vocabulary: names of items, soft, shiny, bumpy
Other skills: developing concentration span (EYFS links- Communication and Language: Listening and attention), categorising objects according to property (EYFS- Mathematics: Shape, space and measure)

Valentines sensory play

If you've never played with clean mud before - I urge to give it a go. I'm not going to lie it is messy (if you have a garden it might be worth doing outside) - but its lots of fun! It feels just like mud but its clean. We made a special Valentines version.

We mixed ripped up a toilet roll and I grated a bar of soap. The Frog thought ripping the paper up was hilarious (and kept sitting in the box we were using so he could throw it over himself like confetti!)

We then mixed it with some warm water (the water needs to be warm enough to melt the soap so this bits a grown up job) For a valentines touch we added a tiny bit of rose scented bubble bath (which was pink) and red glitter.

Both The Frog and The Fairy loved playing with it. It was great using a big box so they could both play at the same time - great for cooperation.

It's great for whisking and swashing with a masher.

Or with your hands (the added bonus being its a great gross motor exercise too).

The next morning The Frog requested we play with it again (he loved it so much we had a good play before breakfast!) The Fairy noticed the mud had turned a deeper shade of pink over night.

Language used: tear, rip,stir, whisk, mix, squash, press, soft, pink, shiny, flowers (when talking about the smell).

Noodle sensory play

With Chinese New Year this week end we thought we'd do a spot of noodle play.

I love activities that both of the kids can participate in and also love watching the difference in how they both play. 

The Frog is very much into putting things in and out of containers ( the teacher-ery description of this is 'enclosing'). This included the noodles. He loved squishing them as he filled bowls, then put them back into the big container. Surprisingly he didn't try to eat them!

The Fairy was less keen to touch them but still wanted to move them - she preferred a spoon. 

She later requested to do some cooking with them in her play kitchen (as a side note I made her kitchen before I started blogging - one day when I'm organised I'm planning to write a post on how I did it!).

This activity was great for using adjective words. Adjectives are so much easier to learn if children can feel and experience the word!

Wrapping paper sensory box

It's a well know fact the small people often spend time playing with the wrapping paper and boxes their presents come in than the presents themselves. Why not save some of your wrapping paper this year and make a wrapping paper sensory box? We did and had lots of fun.

We added some used wrapping paper, shiny bits and a bow. The Frog thought it was so great that he jumped in!

The paper makes a great crinkly sound.

We will be posting some more recycling wrapping paper ideas after Christmas so don't recycle all of you paper - keep some for creating and playing. You might like to check out some of other sensory boxes/ bins too, just click on the link. Polar, Spring, Royal, and Nativity.

Strawberries and cream

In honour of Wimbledon we decided to have some strawberries and cream based sensory play...

I made some 'strawberries' out of craft foam and some 'cream' gloop by mixing cornflour and water. I put some foil in the bottom of the baking tray so when we made marks in the gloop they were even clearer

It was great for mark making as well as sensory exploration. If you've not tried using gloop before - give it ago -its amazing how it changes state from liquid to solid. This morning had been a little fraught (check out my facebook page if you want to find out why!) - this was the perfect 'calm' down activity for the afternoon.

Spring Sensory box

Well the weather hasn't been fantastic but we thought we'd have a bit more 'spring themed' fun before it turns into 'summer' Cue a spring themed sensory tub...

butterflys, flowers and some spring pulses (split peas, and pearl barley to be precise).

The pulses were sooo touchable there was alot of scooping - and not just with the coffee scoop I'd added - why use instruments when you can do it with your hands!

Language focus

Vocabulary: pour, tip, touch, scoop, flower, butterfly

Mint playdough

This play dough is perfect for spring, it smells and looks fresh.

We made some peppermint play dough using our usual recipe 

Then added some fresh mint (from Grandmas garden) 'The Fairy' thought it looked like trees

She then wanted to make a house. The holes are 'windows' and the mint is now people looking out of them

Language Focus
Vocabulary: push, squeeze, press, poke, green, mint, leaf, tree, house, window
Other skills: imaginative play

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Polar sensory tub

Walking through the jungle  by Debbie Harter is a bed time favourite of ours. The book tells the story of a little girl who travels around the world meeting various animals and is back in time for tea! The rhythm of the book is great and the pictures are bright and bold resulting in a very engaging book. We are very lucky to have the Spanish/English version. We are a bilingual family so we try to encourage literacy in both languages. This is a great addition to our bilingual library.

After our success with ice suncatchers I thought some more ice sensory play would be a great idea. So I created a small world polar 'sensory tub' for 'The fairy' to play with based on the iceberg page...

To prepare this activity I froze some water in various containers (with a bit of added glitter). We then added polar animals (I do know that penguins and polar bears live in different hemispheres so this is not geographically correct but these are the polar animals we have in our toy basket!) 'The fairy' helped to choose which animals live in the cold from the selection we had. Then she chose the figure she thought most looked like the girl in the book from our selection of people.

She wanted to feel the ice and explore it to start with (including feeling it on her feet). She then decided 'The frog' may also want to feel it on his- he wasn't to impressed with his big sis's idea!

After spending time exploring the ice we used a glitter shaker to make it snow (the pic of this didn't come out very clearly). My first thought was to use flour and glitter together to make 'snow' but then thought that might get very messy. My very lovely friend and colleague C (who has given me lots of ideas to develop sensory play especially play with food) always tells me 'its not mess its creativity' but I think its better to leave that kind of mess outside or on wipable floors! Let me know if you try it and how you get along

After the snow came small world play.

Here the animals are sleeping while the penguin is telling them a story.

Hopefully we will have time to make some more 'tubs' based around other pages

Language Focus
Vocabulary: cold, slippy, shiny, sparkly, animals names (including categorising where animals live), snow different types of weather
Developing Play Skills: imaginative play is an important stage in a child's language development

Orange playdough fun

I think play dough has to be one of my favourite 'inside' activities. It's simple to make, its fun and 'The fairy' loves it which means I love it too! Its a great way to develop imagination and fine motor skills. With an added bonus that we both find it relaxing (a bit like kneading bread or using clay). So this morning when it appeared that we both had got out of the wrong side of bed (largely due to lack of sleep as 'The frog' is teething) a play dough session seemed to be in order. As 'The fairy' had just had a clementine as a post breakfast snack we commandeered the peel and set to work on the easiest play dough recipe in the world - with a citrus twist.

The play dough recipe below was given to me by my wonderful friend and collegue D, who is Portage worker .... (as an aside the Portage workers I have had the joy to work alongside have been a very talented and inspirational bunch - they are all very special people and have taught me lots especially about sensory play).


Very easy playdough
1 cup of plain flour
1/2 cup of salt
1 cup of boling water (just from the kettle)
1 table spoon of cream of tartar
1 table spoon of oil (this makes it nice and stretchy)




Mix it all up, give it a bit of knead and away you play.

There are loads of things you can add to make the sensory experince different... food colouring, flavouring or a tiny bit of essential oil (NB make sure that it is a non toxic one as some can be toxic) for a different smell, bits to make it give a different texture (lentils, porridge oats) glitter for added sparkle or flowers for a natural touch. When adding ingredients I usually omit a bit of another similar ingredient (e.g. if I'm adding food colouring I leave out a bit of water, flavoured oil then I omit a bit of olive oil or if I'm adding porridge I leave out some flour). The basic mix keeps well in a sealed container in the fridge for a bit (if the there are added 'foody' bits then it doesn't keep as well).

As we had an orange theme we used some food colouring and added orange oil to give an olfactory dimension. We snipped up clementine peel to poke in. After a root around in the cupboard I found some lentils and dried citrus peel to add as well.

Today I encouraged 'The fairy' to use other utensils rather than the favourite rolling and cutting and so we raided the kitchen for interesting looking items.

We squeezed

and banged














and pressed

and pushed












and sprinkled












and finished with some 'pizza cakes'

I love watching The Fairy come up with ideas in play. She often makes worms when we play with playdough with 'no cutters'. I wonder if today she chose 'pizza cakes' because of the food related materiels she had available.

Language Focus
Vocabulary: roll, hit, push, squeeze, sprinkle, smell, orange
Other skills: fine motor skills and imaginative play

Ice ice baby

In our house we love sensory and messy play. We also love sparkly things, so a while back we decided to take advantage of the chilly weather and make some 'ice suncatchers'.

We filled a bun tray and a tupperware tray with water...added some sparkly bits... I put in a few bits of wool to hold them up and left them out on our balcony to freeze. 

Like magic in the morning, we had some beautiful solid discs to admire, touch and hang up to catch the sun.

And after nap time they were gone.

This activity was great for developing concept vocabulary as well as more difficult verbs.... pour, tip, full, cold, hard, chilly, freeze, melt, drip, gone, disappear (as well as the names of colours and shapes of the sparkly bits). 

You could do this activity when the sun was a bit warmer by putting the water in the freezer rather than outside.