I have been out and about in blogland so much lately and there are a ton of great moms, teachers and schools out there sharing awesome ideas. I have been creating quite a list that I CANNOT wait to try and share with all of you.
I saw the neatest activity this morning over at Counting Coconuts so instead of my original plan (which you may see tomorrow!) I went in a totally different direction. Counting Coconuts linked a great homemade play dough recipe from My Montessori Journey and it worked so great! I would thoroughly recommend it.
The making of the play dough (sorry no pictures of that process) took just a couple of minutes but Sam got to help with the mixing and all the stirring. Only problem I encountered was that I had her all excited to play with it right away...DUH....it was too hot! She got kind of upset but I was able to distract her to avoid a total melt down.
While the play dough cooled her and I went outside, gathered some fun stuff for her to use with the play dough and then started creating (okay there was a bath in there too, hence the wet hair).
No the sharks teeth and shells did not come from our backyard! Those are from me personal stash of random stuff I collected when I was growing up that I have still hung on to.
Her favorite part was when I took one of the small shells rolled it up into the play dough and told her it was hiding from her. She loved digging through the dough to find it.
So, love the play dough and love the idea of playing with other items than cookies cutters and utensils.
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The Nitty Gritty!
Used vanilla extract in with the play dough which was great because not only did the dough smell good but our house smelled like I had been making cookies!
The green part of this activity is not only the homemade, non-toxic play dough but the idea of using items from nature in a non-traditional way. It was great to see her being creative with the sticks, stones, shells and teeth.
I think this would be even better with older kids that might be able to use the sticks and play dough to build. Or could make fossils with the shells and rocks. Lots of options with this idea!
Thanks so much to Counting Coconuts and My Montessori Journey for the ideas!!
