sensory play Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Decorating Robots in Sensory Bags

October 19, 2017 By Deirdre

These sensory bags feature robot outlines. Your children will have fun moving the objects inside the sensory bag to add details to the robots. This activity part of a series called 31 Days of ABC. These sensory bags were designed to be used on R Day! While many of the activities in this series are for younger children. I found my 9-year-old decorating the robot several times this week.

Putting the Sensory Bags Together

These sensory bags are so easy to make. You really only need seven supplies to put them together.

Links below are affiliate links.

Supplies

Print Out of a Robot Outline
Clear Hair Gel
Permanent Marker
Gallon Size Zipper Bags
Two Wiggly Eyes
Bag of Buttons
Star Pony Beads

Directions

You will need to download a copy of the Robot Outlines for the Decorating Robots in Sensory Bags Activity. Then you will trace the robot onto the bag with a permanent marker.

Next, you will fill the bag with the contents of a bottle of hair gel. The hair gel should be about 1/4 of an inch thick in the bag.

Finally, you will place the eyes, buttons, and beads into the bag. (It is okay to keep them at the top to start with. ) Then seal the bag.

Exploring the Sensory Bags

There are several ways your children can explore the bag. Here are a few we thought of:

Give the robot a face and button joints
Place buttons and beads on its chest
Cover its body with buttons and beads
Move stars onto the robot’s chest on bead at a time. Count the stars when you place them on the robot.
Place the buttons symmetrically on the robot

If you like this sensory activity, here are some more you will like.

Pumpkin Counting Activities and Sensory Bottle

Let’s Explore Shapes Sensory Bowl and Cards

31 DAYS OF ABC

K – OCTOBER 12

Pennies of Time: K Is for Kindness- This is no longer available.

L – OCTOBER 13

Schooling Active Monkeys: L Is for Lion Craft

M – OCTOBER 14

Sugar, Spice & Glitter: M is for Madeline

N – OCTOBER 15

All Done Monkey: N Is for Nature Crafts

O – OCTOBER 16

Kitchen Counter Chronicles: O Is for Owl Bookmark Printable

P – OCTOBER 17

Creative World of Varya

Q – OCTOBER 18

Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes: Q Is for Quito

R – OCTOBER 19

JDaniel4’sMom: R Is for Robot

S – OCTOBER 20

Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes: S Is for Spanish

U – OCTOBER 22

The Educators’ Spin On it: U Is for Unicorn

W – OCTOBER 24

My Story Time Corner: W Is for Wheels on the Bus

X – OCTOBER 25

The Mommies Reviews: X

Y – OCTOBER 26

Teach Me Mommy: Y Is for Yarn Letters

Z – OCTOBER 27

Bambini Travel: Z Is for Zoo Animals

Goldilocks and The Three Dinosaurs Printable Play Dough Mats

November 14, 2016 By Deirdre

We love dinosaurs at my house. It is not just JDaniel that loves them. My very first classroom was decorated with a dinosaur theme. I was thrilled when I saw that Goldilocks And the Three Dinosaurs was going to be the Virtual Book Club book this week. I had the best time listening to JDaniel read his dad and and I the book after dinner last week. Then JDaniel and I both created dinosaurs based on the book on printable playdough mat.

Some of the links below are affiliate links.

I thought you might want to have your kids make dinosaurs on the play dough mats. They will have a great time creating dinosaurs based on the ones in the book! They also have had a great time coming up with their own dinosaurs.

The play dough mats display just the basic large dinosaur pickle shaped head and a set of eyes. The rest of the mat was intentionally open-ended. I wanted to leave the door open for your children and my son to let their creative juices flow. Your children might want to create a dinosaur from the book. Then they might want to create one of their own.

Play Dough Mats and Play Dough Creations

Papa Dinosaur was made using play dough and a plastic fork.

We didn’t have the exact colors that were used for the dinosaur’s hair, teeth and nostrils. We had to decide on colors that were similar or choose brand new colors for them.

JDaniel decided that one of the dinosaurs that we made needed a tongue with saliva dripping off of it. He pointed out that dinosaurs thinking about chocolate filled girls would be drooling.

If you like this play dough mat activity, here are some more play dough activities you might like:

Chocolate Shadow Play Dough and Groundhog’s Day Activities

Exploring Dr. Seuss Colors and Play Dough

There are so many additional fun DINOSAUR WEEK themed crafts and activities shared by our Dinosaur Week group. Check out the activities below to get you started…

Alphabet Activities

Dino Babies Letter Game – Rainy Day Mum

Number Activities

Dinosaur Number Maze – Inspiration Laboratories

Clothespin Dinosaur Counting Tray

Cooking Activities

How to Make Chocolate Dinosaurs – Mama Smiles

Science Activities

Rocks & Fossils Experiment- Teach Beside Me

Shape Activities

Dinosaur Shape Matching Game – Powerful Mothering

Fire Truck Activity for Kids

October 6, 2014 By Deirdre

Whether you are celebrating Fire Safety Month in October or putting together a community helper unit for your children this fire truck activity would fun to do. It is super easy to put together and super fun for kids to do.

The goal of the activity is to blow into a straw and get all the flames off the bottom a plastic bag decorated with a fire truck. If you can get the flames above the fire truck, that is even better. It takes a lot of breath control to get the flames ( tiny pieces of colored tissue) to rise off the bottom of the bag before you fill the bag with air.

We had to release the air collected in the bag a few times before my son was able to get almost all of the tissue pieces flying. The great thing about this fire truck activity is that you can repeat it over and over again.

How Did I Put This Fire Truck Activity Together?

Step One: Gather the Materials

Large plastic bag
An average sized straw ( A wide straw will allow tissue to fly into it and into your kids’ mouths. A narrow straw won’t generate enough air to get the tissue paper moving.)
Orange, red, and yellow tissue paper in small pieces
Red and black permanent markers
Fire truck coloring page

Step Two: Decorate the Fire Truck Bag

You will need to search your children’s coloring books or the internet for a coloring page picture of a fire truck. Then you will place the coloring page into the plastic bag. Next, you will use the permanent markers to trace the picture of the fire truck.

If you prefer to draw the truck for this fire truck activity freehand, you can. I am just not that talented when it comes to drawing fire trucks.

Step Three: Assembling the Activity

You will need to place a bunch of the colored tissue pieces in the fire truck bag. Next, you will place the straw in the bag. You will need to seal the top of the bag to the right and left of the straw by pressing down on the seal or zipping it shut.

Getting the Fire Truck Activity Going

Now it is time to start blowing the flames. We tried laying the fire truck bag on the table and blowing. It was much easier to hold the bag at the top or on its sides as air is being blown into it.

After posting this activity, I decided to see what it would look like with the fire truck colored in. I went back colored in the fire truck and retook some of the pictures.

Here is what it looks like colored in:

I even made a new opening picture for the colored in a truck.

Which do you like best?

Before or after doing this fire truck activity, you may want to sit down with your children and read a fire truck related children’s book. Here are a few of our favorite fire truck books.

The links below are affiliate links.

Curious George and the Firefighters – Curious George goes on a field trip to a firehouse and ends up helping the firefighters put out a fire.

The Fire Cat– This book is an easy reader. It tells the tale of a cat named Pickles who is adopted by a fire department. Pickles learns during this book to help the firefighters do their jobs.
Meeow and the Big Box>The librarian created an interactive box that illustrated how Meeow created her box step by step. It was such fun.

Do you have favorite fire truck themed children’s book?

Kids Activities With Sensory Learning

July 12, 2014 By Deirdre

This round up shares kids activities that involve sensory bins that help children build on known concepts and explore learning some new ones too. Each of these posts share bin fillers that many of us may have at home already, are reasonable to purchase or could borrow from a friend.

My son loves to explore and learn through kids activities in sensory bins or his water table. I think you may have children in your life that will love learning in sensory bins too.

The kids activities in sensory bins share below were linked up to The Sunday Showcase last week. If you would like to share a wonderful post you have done this week or in the past, please add it to the link up below. Who knows it may show up in my round up of activities next week here on The Sunday Showcase.

Kids Activities With Sensory Learning

Playing the toys in individual tubs of water gave kids a chance to pretend play and so much more in a post by Life With The Moore Babies.

Adventures of Adam’s tunnel sensory bin started out being a Meerkat Manor and ended up being a bin for cars traveling through tunnels. Both activities sound like fun to me!

If you squirt water out of a spray bottle, rubber ducks will move. Fantastic Fun and Learning’s two girls took turns exploring that concept and learning several more.

Frog, Snail and Puppy Dog Tails‘ tub of balls and bowls explored a number of basic concepts. I love how she had two children working and learning together in this post.

The ocean was the themed of a wonderful tub shared last week by The Chaos and The Clutter.

Rubber Boots and Elf Shoes shared a bin filled with wooden beads, wooden utensils and bowls. This looks like a wonderful bin to explore.

Several sensory bin ideas along with tips for setting up sensory bins was shared in a post from Mama Smiles.

Lalymom sent up a really cool bin with coins and a piggy bank. I love the idea of exploring money in a bin.

Ice cream game with shaving cream and ice is one of my son’s favorite summer kids activities in in his water table.

The Sunday Showcase is hosted on the following blogs:

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
Here Come the Girls
Inspiration Laboratories
JDaniel4′s Mom

We each feature different posts that have linked up, so be sure to check everyone out! We’ll also be pinning our favorites to our Pinterest board.

If you are here for the first time, please read this informational post for the full details. Here’s the short version – anything kid friendly and/or child centered is welcome! You are welcome to share more than one post, but we don’t accept links for giveaways, shops, or downloads for purchase, etc.

If you’re linking up, I encourage you to visit some of the other link-ups! Everyone appreciates comments, encouragement, feedback, etc.

*Please note that by linking up you are giving us permission to use a photo (with proper link to you!) in our featured section!

An InLinkz Link-up

Frozen Olaf -Icy Sensory Bin

June 25, 2014 By Deirdre

Last week I shared with you a Frozen Olaf cup craft for kids and you absolutely loved it! I decided to share another Frozen Olaf idea with you that features a sensory bin filled with Frozen Olaf himself and some really cool glass pebbles. Hope you love it too!

The goal of this sensory bin was to create a fun bin (hence having Frozen Olaf in it) that contained a wide variety of textures. The pipe cleaners, pebbles, Frozen Olaf’s eyes, and smile are all various textures. By place, an icy Olaf and cold water in the bin this activity explored temperature too. The water wasn’t super cold but was cold enough to keep Olaf frozen for a little while.

Would you like to make a Frozen Olaf for a sensory bin?

Let’s start with the supplies you will need. Here is what we used:

(For your convenience this post contains affiliate links)

Sky Blue Fusible Pebbles( I got a bag at a dollar store.)
Orange Foam Sheet
Peel and Stick Wiggle Eyes
Black cloth ( I cut up a reusable insulated bag from the grocery store.
Black Chenille Stems
Round cake pan
Dish detergent
Scissors
Roasting Pan

Directions for Creating Frozen Olaf:

We started by placing cold water and some dish detergent in a round cake pan. It is the dish detergent that gave us the bubbly white look Frozen Olaf was going to need to look like a real snowman.

The cake pan with soap water was put in the freezer for about twenty minutes to get the ice to start to form.

While Frozen Olaf’s head was starting to freeze up, we cut a nose out of orange foam. (Foam can handle the wet. Construction paper would have started to disintegrate.) We also cut his smile out of a reusable insulated bag. Just under the black layer of cloth was batting. I was able to cut through the black fabric to create a tooth for Frozen Olaf. (If you can’t find a bag like that, you could use black foam for his mouth and white foam for his tooth.)

When soapy water in the cake pan looked slightly frozen, we placed his facial features on. They sank below the surface a little, but not by much. If your facial feature seem to be sinking a lot, you may want to take them off wait a few minutes more for the ice to freeze up before trying to add them again. We also added several sections of black pipe cleaner at the top for his hair.

Once the facial features were on, we added a little more soapy water to help hold them in place.

Then we waited overnight before taking Frozen Olaf out to play.

When we were ready to play, we put the round cake pan in a roasting pan with cool water and let it sit for a few minutes to loosen our icy creation up. It didn’t take long.

We lifted it gently up and put it into the water. I added cold water to the bin to make Frozen Olaf last longer.

Then we added the glass pebbles to the bin to give it a more frozen feel.

Exploring Frozen Olaf

I didn’t give any direction about how to explore this bin. It was just fun to feel, play, and explore. Children tend to build their own activities this way. For this activity self-direction worked well.

For more early learning activities you may want to explore my Early Learning Board.
Follow JDaniel4’s Mom’s board Early Learning on Pinterest.

{Number Recognition} Do You Know Five?

January 4, 2014 By Deirdre

When you encounter a new concept or skill for the first time, your mind may need several experiences with it to find meaning and understanding in it. Numbers are one of those concepts. Children need to experience them through various modalities (tactical, visual, and auditory) before they have number recognition. They also need to view them with concrete (hands-on), semi-concrete (displayed in pictures) and abstract displays (numbers).

A number concept bag like the one displayed above can be filled with objects that will help children explore numbers. This bag explores the number five in many, many ways.

Let me share with you the learning tools placed in the bag and how to use them.

Wooden Blocks

Blocks can be used to explore the number five in various ways. A mighty tower of five can be built with the blocks. Children could create an imaginative way to display the blocks horizontally and then tracings can be done around the display of five. To bring in auditory learning the blocks can be dropped one at a time so children can hear what the number five sounds like.

Die

Beyond finding the five dots on the die there are several other ways the die can be used to get to know the number five. Children can find combinations of dots on the die that equal five and record them on paper. Another activity could be to keep track of the number of times it takes to roll the number five. They number of rolls could be recorded on paper with tally marks.

Glue Outline of Five

A number five can be created using glue on an index card or piece of cardstock. Children can rub their fingers over the shape of the number. They could also place a paper on top of the glue outline. A crayon can be rubbed over the paper to create a rubbing of the number.

Bean Outline of Five

A number five can be created using glue and beans can be placed on the glue number. Children can rub their fingers over the number five times to help create a tactile memory of the number. The bean outline could also be used to create a rubbing if the rubbing was done carefully.

Stickers on a Card

A card can be created displaying five stickers. The children can create the cards on their own or the card can be created ahead of time. Counting the stickers on the card gives children the opportunity to work with a number in a semi-concrete manner. There are still objects to count, but they are not movable once they are on the card.

Beads on a Pipe Cleaner

Placing five beads on a pipe cleaner could be done by the children or done ahead of time. The idea is that the pipe cleaner is bent to create a bracelet that students can wear once the beads are on it. They can move the beads forward on the bracelet when they count up to five. Moving the beads backward and counting backward from five to one would also be a great way to visualize five in a very concrete way.

Number Recognition- Tooth Pick Tally Marks

Toothpick Tally Marks Toothpicks can be arranged in play dough to display the number five in tally marks. Children can push the toothpicks into the play dough one at time counting as they go. Creating the gate across the four toothpicks to create the number five can be challenging. Children will really have to push down on the fifth toothpick unless they create a thick area of play dough.Popsicle Tally Marks

Popsicle stick tally marks are super easy to count with. Four blue sticks were selected for this activity along with one red. The four blue sticks would be displayed vertically. The red stick would place over them going diagonally. Giving the stick that will be displayed diagonally a different color helps it stand out visually.

Pentagon Puzzle Piece

If you have a shape puzzle, the pentagon puzzle piece from it makes the great tool for learning the number five. Children can see and feel the five sides and five angles that make up a pentagon. They can also trace an outline of that puzzle piece onto paper. The tracing of the pentagon can then be labeled with the numbers 1 to 5.

Five can be explored and understood when this Do You Know the Number 5 bag is shared during circle time or at your the kitchen table. It contents could be further explored in a center or work table. Leaving the materials out to be explored would be a wonderful invitation to learn more about the number 5 and work on number recognition.