Next we explored Arctics and Antarctica with my daycare class. We learned which animals and birds live in cold climate and watched an
ice melting experiment. Children compared different textures of the
sensory table's contents: soft cotton balls, smooth and squishy water
beads, melting ice and shaving cream.
I continue making sensory bins for my daughter's daycare. Here is one of them. This sensory table is huge. It was hard to fill it with content to make it look like a forest but the good part is that an entire class of preschoolers can play with it at the same time.
My daughter stated daycare and I come to her class once a week to paint with kids and do sensory activities. During our first class we studied insects. Age of kids in this class is from 18 months to 2.5 years.
This sensory bin is very much like the one that I did for my daughter at home. Just the size of the bin is bigger and every child got a set of tools: tweezers, scoopers and cups.
I had a feeling that many kids saw a sensory bin for the first time in their lives and they just couldn't stop playing with it. I showed them insects one by one, named them, talked about where they live, what they eat, whether they fly or crawl.
I have expanded my cardboard town with a small town market. Even our princess went shopping there.
I made little fruit and vegetables out of Play-Doh. This time I used cardboard of different thickness. Tables, roofs and scales are made of thick cardboard; boxes and price tags are made of a pasta box.
Playing with the market was a lot of fun. Some of the fruit and vegetables got ruined pretty quickly but potatoes, watermelons, pumpkins and peppers still look good.
I finally finished a cardboard house that I started building for my daughter this week. Even though it was unfinished this whole time, she used to sit inside it every day. It is big enough to fit the two of us. This is a very thick cardboard and I had to ask help from my husband a few times since it was so hard to cut. I used hot glue gun for the roof and painted the house with acrlics.
When I saw my daughter’s reaction to my cardboard town, I realized that I should continue with this theme. Here is a playground for our town’s kids.
Тоday, she tested the structures. Since she was swinging the swings really strongly, I reinforced the horizontal piece with a sushi stick. The swings are attached to that piece with two threads.
There is semolina in the sandbox but you can put sand in there too.
I've been asked multiple times how this playground was built so I created a manual for those who want to do it. I marked places where you will need to put glue with red (I used hot glue gun). Fold along the doted lines. The diagrams are not to scale.
We were painting with different kinds of flowers. It was interesting indeed but painting with feet is still our favorite so my daughter walked on the painting with her feet covered in paint.
Then she took a small rose, separated the petals and glued them to the painting with a glue stick. Some of them quickly fell off but some stayed.
This is my town made of cardboard. It took me a few days to cut the pieces out, glue them together and paint them with acrylics. I used cardboard boxes, we have plenty of them all the time mostly from Amazon.
This town provides endless opportunities for role play. One of the little guys is pushing a shopping cart with groceries, another one is waiting for the train, kids are playing in the park. We played with it for days and my daughter didn't want any of her other toys.
The three houses, the grocery store, train station, road signs, traffic lights and the board itself are made of cardboard. No pieces are glued to the board, everything can be rearranged, removed or replaced with other buildings. This game reminds me of SimCity a lot.
The great thing about it is that I can add another board next to it and continue to build the town in any direction. I am planning to add a police station, a school and a playground.
Painting with balloons is a really fun activity. You need to blow a balloon and dip it into paint. The only problem was that my daughter loved popping balloons by squeezing them with her nails while painting. Our entire kitchen was covered in paint within moments. Therefore, my advice - use easy washable paint.
We collected some flowers and leaves and made a painting with them. There were three stages to the process. First, we poured Elmer's glue on paper and my daughter placed flowers over it. We left it to dry overnight.
The next day glue became dry and transparent and we were ready to paint over it. My daughter used brushed, hands, sponges, balloons and even her feet to paint.
The third stage was to glue the rest of the flowers after paint dried.
She loved this part the most probably because she learned to squeeze
glue out of the tube herself and she was doing the entire process on her
own.
We went camping over the weekend and brought new things to use for my sensory bins. This is one of my favorite sensory bins because it is exactly about us. This is the type of vacation our family likes.
Together
we helped Lego men collect wood, start a fire, cook food and put
them to sleep in a tent. They met all of the forest animals, went
swimming in a river, walked on the bridge and climbed trees. There are
endless opportunities for role play with this bin.
The
light looks like it's coming from the fire but it is actually light
from a flashlight located underneath the bin. I placed the bin on two
chairs and there is a flashlight between them.
This is what it looks like without a flash from my camera:
The
bridge and the table are made of sticks glued together with a hot glue
gun. The little saucepan is made of foil. The tent and the fire are made
of construction paper.
