We're going on a Bear Hunt....

One of the children's favourite books is 'We're going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosin and Helen Oxenbury. This book is currently being read on a daily basis so we just had to incorporate it into our sensory play experiences!

We went to the supermarket to buy some cat litter trays-the children had no idea what they were for so this added to the excitement.

We later went to the park for a picnic and collected lots of twigs for our sensory play. Once again the children didn't know why we were collecting them so this added to the intrigue. As they added the twigs to our bag they began to guess what we were going to do with them. Ideas included sticking them on paper to make a picture, building a fire, making guns (the boys came up with this one!) and tapping them together to make music. Some good ideas and maybe something to use the twigs for when we have finished!

After we got home the children had a bit of free play time while I set up our 'Bear Hunt' in the garden.

I used hay (from the bunnies supply-thank you bunnies!) for the long wavy grass

Water (obviously!) for the deep cold river

Potting compost soaked in water for the thick oozy mud

 Twigs and sticks (that we collected earlier in the day from a local park) for the big dark forest

And the inners of 3 (clean) nappies soaked in lots of water (you'll be surprised how much this actually makes!)for the swirling whirling snowstorm

We took our book out to the garden and began our story time. 

As I read the story the children acted it out.

 Swishy swashy, swishy swashy.....

 Splash splosh, splash splosh.....

Squelch squerch, squelch squerch.....

 Stumble trip, stumble trip (the children didn't stand on this for health and safety reasons due to having bare feet!)

 Hoooo Woooo, Hoooo Woooo.....

We tiptoed towards a cave in the corner of the garden and saw...

....one shiny wet nose, two big furry ears, two big googly eyes......

IT'S A BEAR!!!

 We ran back to the house and jumped on the sofa.

We're not going on a bear hunt again!!

This is who we found in the cave.

His name is Billy Bear and he is our new playroom buddy.

Billy will be going on lots of travels and will be building up a photo album of the places he visits and will hopefully send us postcards to plot on our World map! 

The children are really looking forward to taking Billy with them when they go on their holidays this year.

Hands on-spaghetti

Today we decided to cook some spaghetti with a difference. We boiled up 2 saucepans of water, 1 with red food colouring in and 1 with green.
I added a few drops of oil as cooked spaghetti tends to stick together when it is drained.

The green food colouring didn't really take.....

...so we added some green paint!

And mixed it in.

Then we had fun with it!

The red food colouring took really well...

We had lots of fun with this!

Chopsticks come in handy

We added the green spaghetti to the red and mixed it in.

Although it took longer to clean up everything after this activity we had such a wonderful time!

Hands on-pretend baking

We made up a 'Baking' sensory play box and the children chose which food ingredients to add. We bought: dried pasta tubes ( I think we'll get some Canelloni tubes as well as these will be good fit smaller objects inside) dried rice, red lentils for some colour and some dried beans.

Our equipment included: whisks, various sized spoons, various sized pots and containers (some with lids), a measuring jug, chop sticks, ice cube trays, funnels, sieves, a collander, wooden spoons plus more!

We set our sensory play items on a couple of low level tables outdoors and let the 'baking' commence!

Let's see what we can get into an ice cube tray!

Scooping with a wooden spoon isn't as easy as it looks....

You can get so much more on a serving spoon!

Let's try not to spill any!

Transferring from a big container to a smaller one....

 ....and then to an even smaller one.

This activity kept the children occupied for ages and was a huge success.

We will definately be doing this again!

Hands on-construction play

The children have been busy exploring the sensory table that was waiting for them when they arrived this morning.

We have a variety of stone (bought from our local DIY store), a selection of vehicles-diggers, dumper trucks etc and other 'construction' toys as well as various spoons, pots and containers.

The children had lots of fun exploring.

They discussed how the stones felt-one said her stone was smooth another child said his was bumpy.

They worked out how to use the digger and fill the dumper trucks before driving them off to 'deposit' their load elsewhere.

They poured stone from one container to another and we talked about which was heavier and which had more.

They lined up rows of stone according to shape, size and colour.