sensory Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Fireworks Display in a Sensory Bag Activity

June 26, 2019 By Deirdre

Sensory bags are a great way for children to work on their fine motor skills. This cool sensory bag features a fireworks display theme. Your children will have fun moving the red, clear and blue stars along the tracing lines on the bag. Once they have moved one star along a line and onto a star, they can work on adding stars to the other lines. The hair gel in the bag makes it easy to move the stars.

Building an Understanding of What Fireworks Displays Are

I like to share a book that relates to an activity before we start it. Below you will find some wonderful books that have 4th of July or fireworks theme.
Links below are affiliate links.

Putting the Sensory Bags Together

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

Supplies

Print Out of Fireworks Outline for the Sensory Bag Activity Bag Page
Clear Hair Gel
Permanent Marker
QuartSize Zipper Bags
Star-Shaped Patriotic Pony Beads

Directions

You will need to download a copy of the Fireworks Outline for the Sensory Bag Activity page. 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 star 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:

Drag the stars along the lines to get to the stars at the ends of the lines.
Drag the plastic stars from the stars down the lines.
Try dragging or pushing the stars with a finger on your non-dominate hand.

If you like this 4th of July Activity, here are some more you will love:

Exploring Patriotic Words in Binary Code

Magnetic Games for Kids- Fireworks in a Jar

Sensory Activity- Blowing Clouds with a Straw

February 13, 2017 By Deirdre

Blowing Cloud like puffs with a straw from one cloud to another is a wonderful sensory activity and a science exploration. Your children will experiment with how strongly they need to blow each puff to get it to get to the paper cloud.

Let me walk you through this sensory activity and share with you how to turn into a science exploration.

Sensory Activity

Getting Ready

Materials:

Variety of types of straws
Cotton Balls
Pom-Poms
Tissues Wadded into a Ball
Styrofoam balls or peanuts
White and blue construction paper
scissors
tape

You need to tape some paper clouds that have been glued to blue paper across a table or floor. The tape will hold the clouds in place.

Then place a collection of straws into a cup for your children to use. Each child will need their own set of straws to avoid sharing germs.

Next, gather to gather clouds like objects and place then into a bowl.

Blowing the Clouds Activity

Children will select a paper cloud to place their first cloud object on. They will then blow the object off that could and to the next cloud.

When they have made the cloud object travel to each of the clouds. They can select a different object to blow or a different type of straw to blow with.

Science Exploration

Before your children start blowing their cloud objects you can ask them to predict which object will be the easiest to blow. After blowing each of the objects from cloud to could. You can see if the prediction was right.

You can also have them predict which straw will be the easiest to blow with. Then they can try each of the straws to see which one is the easiest. After testing all the straws, you can ask them if the result proved their prediction to be correct.

Links below are affiliate links.

This activity would be wonderful to explore after reading the book Little Cloud by Eric Carle. Here are some more wonderful activities based on the book:

Here are some more wonderful books about clouds:

Falling Leaves Sensory Activity for Kids

September 30, 2016 By Deirdre

While I was brainstorming leaf themed activities to share with you this week, I remembered a sensory activity on Fun at Home with Kids. This falling leaves sensory activity is loosely based on it. One big difference is that I did the lacing with yarn.

Putting This Sensory Activity Together

Supplies
Scissors
Brown Yarn
Rectangular Laundry Basket

Leaves Made from the Following: construction paper, melt, origami paper

Constructing the Sensory Activity

Adding the Trunk and Some Branches

There really isn’t a right or wrong way to create the tree in the laundry basket. You just decided which side would be the trunk. Then you can string a long piece of yarn from one end of the basket to the other. Sometimes the yarn can be wrapped around a top rung of the basket and other times it can go down to a low rung. Other times you can string the yarn across to a side of the basket on the other end to create side branches.

You will keep wrapping until you run out of yarn. You can start a new long piece of yarn after tying off the first one or stop.

Adding More Branches

You will find it easier to add small branches by creating them with short pieces of string. You may decide to tie the beginning of the yarn to end of the string after creating a branch.

Creating the Trunk

You will take a long piece of yarn and weave it up and down across the strings making up the trunk. You will want to tie the end of the yarn to the first string before you start. When you have finished, you will tie the end of the yarn to the last string in the trunk.

If you want a narrow trunk, you can pull the string tightly was you weave.

Ideas for a Sensory Activity

Here are some different sensory activity ideas you can do with your tree basket:

Drop the leaves through the tree one by one.
Place leaves at the bottom of the tree. Then shake the basket. Children can watch the leaves falling down after the hit the tree.
Children can create a design with the leaves on top of the yarn tree. If the leaves fall through, they can reach through and pick them up. Balancing the leaves can be tricky, but is worth the challenge.

This is part of an early learning activities series inspired by I Can Teach My Child called Toddler Time. Although my son is no longer a toddler, I will be joining I Can Teach My Child to share activities you can do with your young children this month. I will include ways of using activities with older children in most of my posts.

Christmas Activities- Christmas Treasure Tree

December 11, 2012 By Deirdre

One of the things on our list of twenty five things to do before Christmas was to go visit the Festival of Trees in downtown Greenville at the Hyatt Hotel. JDaniel’s preschool had sponsored and decorated a tree that was to be on display and I wanted him to see it. JDaniel’s school tree had a Happy Birthday to Jesus theme. It was such fun to see the birthday hats that his teacher has worked on right there on the tree.There were many trees on display. I think that there were at least twenty five of them. Some displayed a theme that fit the business that had sponsored the tree and others were decorated by school using homemade ornaments. On the way home I thought about all those uniquely decorated and beautiful trees. There weren’t any that were the same. Each displayed the personality of its designer. We needed to have one of our Christmas activities be decorating our own personal tree.

Christmas Activities- Christmas Treasure Tree

We have a three foot tree that we put out for JDaniel upstairs that had yet to be decorated. Seeing all those wonderful trees gave me an idea. Why not have JDaniel decorate the tree with recycled treasures. He loves to collect treasures and used them to create with.

JDaniel and I scoured the house and garage looking for things that he could use to decorate the tree.

Here are some of the things we found for our Christmas activities treasure tree:

Mardi Gras Beads
Hawaiian Lei
Netting From a Bag of Sweet Potatoes
Bottle Caps and Lids
Tulle from last Christmas
Stickers leftover from decorating Party Hat Christmas Trees
Ribbons and Bows
Bread Tags

After we had gathered all the items that could be used to decorate, JDaniel started creating. This was going to be a “Do Your Own Thing” tree JDaniel informed me.

He had a wonderful time putting things on the tree and taking them off. Things were placed over and over again in new spots. Decorating a tree is very serious business and he was going to make sure it was done well. He did a great job with the tree. I love the idea of a Hawaiian lei garland and bow star.

The lei ended up being decorated with foam stickers as did old jar lids and the tree limbs themselves. It was such fun to sit back and watch him work. Old bread tags made wonderful ornaments and ribbon pieces were shoved (placed) into branches to make really whimsical decorations.

He is going to redecorate this tree many times until Christmas I think. It will be fun to watch him create and recreate decorations. I don’t mind I love that he has made recycled treasures into a wonderful Christmas treasure three. He also worked on his small motor, creativity, and planning skills while doing it.