{Play} Sensory Activities For Little Piggies
Remember that sensory play post I told you about a few weeks back that I wrote for Childhood Beckons? Well, here it is in full!
At our house we have a lot of fun with sensory activities, like playing and learning with rainbow rice, baking, and kneading playdough. Most of the time, we are concentrating on feeling and experiencing the different textures with our hands and maybe smelling or tasting things — but our poor feet don’t get much time to play!
As adults, I think it’s easy to forget how nice it feels to wriggle our toes in something squishy or new for the first time, since we spend much of our days in shoes. My daughter always coaxes me into taking off my shoes at the playground sandbox, by earnestly inquiring, “Don’t you want to feel the sand in your toes?”
If you’re looking for a few ways to incorporate your little ones’ toes into your regular sensory play, here a few activities we enjoy that we’d love to share with you (the titles & photos are clickable if you want to see more about our activity):
Playing In Bowls Of Water
Running Over Bubble Wrap
Letting Our Feet Do The Cooking
Squishing Playdough
Walking In Beans
Jumping In Homemade Mud
Painting With Shaving Foam
What are some of the ways you incorporate your little ones’ piggies into your sensory play?
LEARN! Sensory play, sensory exploration, tactile play
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Chrissy – who has written 426 posts on The Outlaw Mom® Blog - Creative Living in a Conventional World.
[…] like puzzle pieces or lacing beads in them), (squeezable) sidewalk chalk, (edible) finger paint, bubble wrap, floam, cloud dough, and sand. The possibilities are […]
[…] like puzzle pieces or lacing beads in them), (squeezable) sidewalk chalk, (edible) finger paint, bubble wrap, floam, cloud dough, and sand. The possibilities are […]
[…] like puzzle pieces or lacing beads in them), (squeezable) sidewalk chalk, (edible) finger paint, bubble wrap, floam, cloud dough, and sand. Whew! Though these aren’t really “toys” per se, […]
[…] like puzzle pieces or lacing beads in them), (squeezable) sidewalk chalk, (edible) finger paint, bubble wrap, floam, cloud dough, and sand. Whew! Though these aren’t really “toys” per se, […]
this is great. We love bowls of water over here too but the others we have never tried. Look forward to it. Thanks for sharing-frogs and snails and puppy dog tails
I love this my kids are SOOOO into foot exploration!
Toes have so much fun in your house!!! Love these ideas
Thanks, Maryanne! I was going to write a separate post about an activity, and then realized that we already incorporate it into our activities. Thanks for stopping by
I love these ideas, but my 16 month old puts EVERYTHING in her mouth! I set up bowls of sudsy water for her to play in sometimes, and I spend half the time trying to keep her from drinking it! She would surely try to eat dried beans!
I totally hear you - my son was the same way until about 2 months ago (he just turned 2) and even now he still puts things in his mouth … just not everything! Actually both my kids (2 and 3.25) still drink soapy (and dirty!) bathwater and I have to monitor them.
You can try just plain old water and I bet your daughter would have a blast and you wouldn’t have to worry about her eating it. For variety, add different bowls of juice for color if you’re not a fan of food coloring. Another sensory activity for either hands or feet that is fun is jello, which is safe to eat if she ends up tasting her play materials. Here’s a post where we played with the Jello Jigglers recipe: http://theoutlawmom.com/2012/01/17/celebrate-valentines-day-fun-with-jello/
Have fun!
Thanks for the idea about the juice for color. I always see these great ideas with food coloring, but I’m not a big fan of food coloring.
These are all great ideas
You guys don’t do cloud dough anymore but you do homemade mud? haha! I guess the lack of baby oil does make clean-up a little easier. That is one thing about cloud dough- once it solidifies, it’s forever.
This looks fun!
Well, we did the cloud dough once and never again
It was fun, but soooo messy. It wasn’t a good idea for us to do it on our deck!