Winter Sensory Play

Children of all ages enjoy open ended sensory play and over the last few weeks we have had a few variations of winter themed play for them to enjoy. 

Initially we used our snow blanket with cotton wool balls and tweezers to encourage fine motor skills as well as the introduction of words relating to winter using our magnetic letters. We introduced some animals that live in cold conditions, talking about their habitats.

Our second sensory tray proved to be a lot messier! We used tin foil as an ice base and covered this with corn flour to represent the snow. The children attempted to build snowmen together with making vehicle tracks in the snow. 

Particularly evident within these play sessions is the great use of imagination with elaborate stories being invented by children from three to nine years! Our youngest (1 year old) was content using spoons to move cotton wool balls around and lining up cars in the snow. 

Childminder Morning

Each term we aim to have a themed morning with other childminders. Courtesy of Michelle Edlin Childminding we attended this lovely session in Plympton today along with merry Monkeys Childminding. The theme was junk modelling and the children created a wide range of simple characters through adding eyes and shapes to their chosen boxes and cartons. 

Additionally there was so much sensory play for the children. Our youngest members particularly enjoyed the dried rice with pots and pans that they were able to spread, fill containers with and simple bang the pots together. 

A big hit with the older children was sticking spaghetti into play dough to create sculptures and then threading cheerios onto their spaghetti. They also loved the animals frozen into ice blocks, working together to work out how to free the animals.  

These sessions are so great for the children as they enable the children to socialise in big groups and enable us as childminders to swap and share ideas with each other. All in all a lovely morning!

Ocean Sensory Dough

We frequently visit the local aquarium and as such I know how fascinated all the children are by the fish and other sea creatures. This provided a perfect theme for our latest sensory play. I created play dough in different shades of light and dark blue and in a green/blue colour. We talked about how they were all different colours of blue, discussing light and dark. 

To the tray we added some plastic sea creatures in addition to some shells, glass pebbles and a small number of tools to move the dough around. The children were fascinated with the shiny glass stones and chose to make different shapes sticking them and the shells into the dough, one even saying he had made a snowman. 

Throughout the play the children practised their counting skills, counting out and comparing the number of stones in their sculptures. We also discussed the sounds that we could hear at the beginning of the animal words such as sss for seal and t for turtle. 

Magformers

Magformers, magnetic colourful shapes, are one of our newer resources in my setting, purchased after seeing them used at a toddler group. They seem to instantly engage all the children who ranged from two to eight years in age. 

 The children initially made patterns through sticking the shapes onto a magnetic whiteboard, making two-dimensional patterns. Their curiosity soon began to shine when they all started building far more creative structures. The shapes click together very easily and are so colourful that they maintained the children's interest. 

There are so many benefits to be gained from this toy from developing both imagination and co-ordination through to learning about shapes and colours. We also talked about the magnetic properties, introducing our big magnet for interest. I was so impressed with these, they shall definitely be used a lot!