*there's our playing learning creating projects

This post is
a) to make fun of some recent failures and
b) to save some links that I will want to access in the future.

I kept seeing rice as a good sensory activity online and I was familiar with using it for sand tray therapy at work. So I made some colored rice and gave it to Will. He had fun helping me make the rice and did really well with it - sitting and playing for quite a while. The part of rice play that didn't work is that Will eventually started to EAT the rice. And then Katie the dog ATE the rice too. This rice is uncooked and green from food coloring. yuk. Here is where I got the inspiration. Beautiful isn't it? I still plan to do it on a bigger scale like they did one day. In the meantime I will keep bringing out the small box of green rice I've got and will work on keeping it out of his mouth, because unless it spills into a pile of broken glass* it will last a very long time.

That brings me to my other unsuccessful activity - dried beans*. I got a bag of dried black eyed peas and put them in a big glass bowl. It  had a lid so I thought it was perfect for long term storage. Will liked to dig his hands in the peas and hide some of his small toys for finding. After doing this activity only once, I put the bowl up high on a shelf in the laundry room. Just a few hours later I tried to get something off the same shelf and can you believe that bowl of peas fell to the floor and broke!?! I was not about to try to separate peas from glass, especially when they only cost me about $2. So I'm now out one Pyrex bowl with lid (a wedding gift) and a $2 bag of peas. I will do this one again in the future, but I will collect more plastic containers first!

Here is my near future TO DO LIST:
Ice Cube Painting
Playing with Natural Light
Water Beads

TO DO when Will is older:
Giant Bubble Snakes
Hot Colored Rocks - can also use them for coloring
Hovercraft
I Spy Bottles
Bubbles and Light
Snow in the Summer
Street Paint

Things I will probably like more than Will:
Treehouse Play Scene
Puffy Bath Paint
Nature Table

Quick and Easy:
Car Mat
Slide drawing 

Helps with learning letters or numbers:
Squishy Bag
Alphabet and Number Stones
Edible ABCs

These came from several different sites, but I spend the most time on the
Play at Home Moms site at playathomemom3.blogspot.com
(thanks to fellow heart mom Tara for leading me to that one),
The Artful Parent at artfulparent.typepad.com,
and PaintCutPaste at paintcutpaste.com.

Here is our first try with bathtub paint:

 

His favorite part was using the paint on his hands to make bubbly waves.

This will be our next one - Hammering Tees. Since it's 100+ degrees outside we'll be using an indoor alternative. Will LOVES a good round of hammering.