4 seasons – Page 8 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Halloween Sensory Gel Bag

Becca loves sensory gel bags… and they are super easy to make!!

You’ll need:
a strong freezer bag (quart size is perfect)
clear book/box tape
clear hair gel – clear works best for this b/c you’re going to be adding your own color… I found a great big bottle at Dollar Tree and used the entire bottle in this bag.
food coloring
stuff to go in it – So I made mine orange, and just used a bunch of sparkly black sequins I had – to make it sort of Halloween-ish. I saw an idea online that used google-eyes of various sizes. Or, you could get a bunch of little spiders (I saw them at Dollar Tree) to put inside, or leaf confetti (also at Dollar Tree) if you wanted to make it fall, but NOT Halloween. So there’s lot of fun options!

Make sure before you put ANYTHING inside that you secure all three closed sides with book tape to prevent little holes and leaks. Then, fill with your gel, food coloring, and stuff. Squeeze as much air out as possible, and zip closed, then fold the top down and secure with more tape.

Becca has been enjoying hers not only for picking up and squishing, but also for viewing on her light box! And how awesome does it look with the light shining thru?

Apple Theme Center

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I’m all about quick, easy ideas that I can throw together in just a few minutes. This center was not one of those ideas. So if you are just starting with sensory activities for your kiddos, this is not the place to start. BUT – any one of these ideas on their own IS a fabulous start. You just might not be ready to put them all together on one day to create a center.

If you’ve read my blog much, you know that Becca is typically satisfied for quite a little bit the first time I intro an activity, and then beyond that, it usually only gets about 5-10 mins of play in a day, every now and again. The great thing about this center is that she has really been glued to it for quite a while, and will go and select a different activity different times… which makes me happy since I did take about an hour to put it all together. (As an aside – I’ve started this week going around and putting away old activities – storing them in labeled Ziploc bags – so that in a couple months I can pull them back out and they will be new again. Sneaky Mommy! 😉 )

The first thing you’ll need for your center is a place to put everything. Maybe you have an adorable little bookshelf that everything goes on fabulously. Or maybe you have a water table like ours (aff link) that is just waiting to be filled…

Here are the activities in my Apple Theme Center:

Word Building/Reading
Apple Sorting/Tossing
Rock Dumping/Shaking
Ten Apples Up On Top Reading/Building

Word Building/Reading
This activity has been in my brain for a while, but I hesitated to do it with her because I actually don’t have a set of magnetic letters. And then it hit me – I DO have magnet tape! So, I wrote the words I wanted on index cards, and cut out the letters. Then I stuck tiny pieces of magnet tape on the back! This little sheet tray I got at Dollar Tree in the cooking section. It’s also the perfect size for her little hands to haul out of the center and over the automan or couch for more intense play just focused on this activity. She has begun to try to read the words as sight words, and is doing really well.

Apple Sorting/Tossing
Again with Dollar Tree – I found these little green and red apples in the home decor section, and then I pulled the red and green buckets from her Farmer’s Market Set (Get Yours Here – Aff Link) and she can sort them. She has also enjoyed setting the bucket on the ground and stepping back to toss the apples into the correct bucket – making it a great gross motor activity, as well.

Rock Dumping/Shaking
I read somewhere that you could make rocks or other hard materials scented by adding tea leaves to them (I honestly don’t remember where), so I got these green rocks, again, at Dollar Tree in the home decor section – literally right next to the apples – and I added Apple Crumble Black Tea to it – so they smell like apples! I had thoroughly cleaned and dried out a coffee creamer bottle, which is absolutely perfect for this activity. She loves to use the funnel and scoop to put the rocks into the bottle, then close the lid, shake it, and then open the lid and shake the rocks back into the bowl. It’s turned into a super fun activity that covers several of the senses. (SO IF YOU’RE JUST SELECTING ONE OF THESE ACTIVITIES TO START WITH, THIS IS A GREAT ONE!)

Ten Apples Up On Top Reading/Building
We LOVE the book Ten Apples Up On Top. So when I saw this idea from Ellen over at Cutting Tiny Bites, I just new we HAD to do it. Here’s how we extended her activity a tad. I printed up this sheet (FREE PRINTABLE HERE!) of ten apples, and let Becca paint them. (I had planned to do red, green, and yellow, and then discovered we were out of paint. So that might be an extension you’d want to add.. so that as you build, you can build a pattern!) After they had dried, I cut them out and taped them onto ten blocks. We only had nine that matched, so the tenth one is the “roof,” as Becca calls it. So here’s how you do it – as you read the book, you stack an apple block on top each time that the animals in the book add an apple. It’s super fun. Although if you pick a heavy top block like we did, you’ll end up with all ten apples up… and then dropping. But, that just adds to the fun!
Looking for the Ten Apples Up On Top Board Book? Here you go! (aff link)
Looking for wooden blocks? Try this set! (aff link)

Fyi – your Apple Theme Center will not stay looking like my top picture for very long. After lots of love, it might look something like this… but just know that this means its being well loved, and your child is getting lots of benefit from it… and if your magnet board looks like ours, you’ll know your hubby has been playing as well. 😉

Total Mommy Prep Time: All told, it probably took about an hour to put it all together – maybe a little longer?
Total Becca Play Time: She spent about 45 minutes here the first day, and has easily spent 15 minutes every day since then on these activities. VERY beneficial and well worth my time to put it together!

Apple Volcano

There are LOTS of blog posts out there about how to make apple volcanoes, but if you haven’t done this with your kids, you really really should. It’s super fun to make the apple “explode.” Simply cut the core out, leaving the bottom in tact. Pour baking soda down inside the apple, and replace the core. Then, place it on a tray and pour vinegar over top! That simple! Becca enjoyed sticking her hands inside the “bubbles” and feeling the volcano. Then, she found the vinegar smell interesting, and enjoyed playing in the soap in the sink to help her hands smell better. All in all, it was a super fun after dinner activity!

Leaf Man

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I LOVE books by Lois Ehlert. So when I came across this one (aff link) on Amazon and realized that not only did I not own it, I had never read it… well, I decided it was time to buy! So I did. Leaf Man is a fabulous book and true to form, Ehlert has once again brought her illustrations to life and made fun shapes and sizes of pages. As soon as the book came in, I read it to Becca, and have read it to her every day since. She loves it, and loves looking at the pictures to see all the creatures Ehlert has created in her illustrations – using only leaves.

So we decided (it was pretty mutual) that we should try to make our own Leaf Man. I got out the rest of the leaves left over from our owl project, and we made all kinds of fun things on her tray. Then, I got out some beans and popcorn kernels and toothpicks from her fall sensory bin for eyes and such. We had a lot of fun making them… and then she started to get bored. But she noticed her beans sorta made the letter O… and we were off. I started making letters out of beans, and she started making letters out of toothpicks, and it was super fun. You never know when you will have an impromptu lesson on your hands!

Jack-o-Lantern Sensory Art

So I decided to go WAY out of my comfort zone, and do a spin off of this activity from Hands on: as we grow and make jack-o-lanterns! So glad we did… it was a BLAST! Not something we’ll do every day, by any means, but it was super fun.

Like Jamie did in her activity with her son, George, I gave Becca a tray of shaving creme, let her mix the yellow and red food coloring, and just play. Then, I added glue and gold glitter. Man, she loved it! She most enjoyed when I got my hands in it too and we could hold hands and do finger play together in the goop. (Meant that I didn’t get very many pictures, but I know you’ll pardon that since it just means we were having so much fun!) Then, true to form, she started spreading it on her legs, tummy, arms… and when Daddy got home from work and saw what we were doing and said it was shaving creme, she proceeded to “shave” her legs. Ya’ll, this must be some innate sense that is born into little girls b/c she has NEVER SEEN ME DO THIS! HA! She doesn’t even know about shaving her legs. Ha! Hilarity ensued. I’ve cropped a pic here so you can see just a glimpse of how much shaving creme she had on herself. It was just too much fun.

Once she started to get a little “done” with the activity, I pulled out four paper plates – two large and two small – and let her cover the plates in the foamy paint she had mixed up. We let them dry, and went to the bath tub for a wash down. The next morning, after they were totally dry, I cut out black triangles and rectangles and let her glue them on for eyes, nose, and mouths for her jack-o-lanterns. She really enjoyed squeezing the glue, but needed help. Gotta work on that pincer grip still! Then, the next day, I attached them to our butcher paper, and we sounded out some words to make our label for the page. Super fun project that took a while to complete, but that’s ok… we need all the entertainment we can get around here! HA!