sensory

Water Bead Tea Party Pretend Play

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We LOVE water beads!  They are such a fun way to play.  We’ve done so many fun activities with water beads: color matching, seasonal sensory bins, and even fine motor play with them.  One day we pulled out a pretty pink color for a little tea party pretend play.


Set up an invitation to play with the kids. Imagination, fine motor, pretend, and more with water beads!

 

Water Bead Tea Party

Note~ All children’s activities that we share on Sugar Aunts should be supervised by a responsible adult.  This activity especially should be monitored closely by an adult as children may get swept up in the moment of imaginative play.  If you are worried that your child may put water beads into their mouth, please do not attempt this activity. Sugaraunts.com is not responsible for any injuries or accidents.  Sorry for the lameness, but it must be said…because you never know.  Just use caution. 
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Onto the fun.  We grabbed a packet of Pink Water Beads and let them sit overnight in water.  By the next morning, we had a bin full of beads ready for playing.  I set up our tin tea set.  We were ready to play! 

Pink water beads for sensory play.

How fun does this look??

We poured a few cups of “tea”.  This was a great fine motor activity for Baby Girl (age 2.5).  Pouring, scooping, and transferring the water beads from cup to cup is a great way to practice dexterity and control with movements.

We pretended to have a tea party with lots of refills needed.  This sensory play activity that was very relaxing.  Running your hands through water beads has such a calming affect. 

Would you like a cup of tea? 

More water bead ideas you may enjoy:

Glitter Glue Salt Dough Recipe

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This salt dough recipe is a spin on the classic play dough made with salt. It’s got a unique coloring agent that adds a bit of “stick” to the dough, making is an awesome sensory material for challenging the tactile sensory system while encouraging fine motor skills. If you love creative and fun dough recipes, try this salt dough made with crayons.

We love making up a batch of salt dough.  It’s a great moldable dough for creating crafts like this salt dough keychain and even ornaments.  This recipe for glitter glue dough was a total accident.  It turned out to be completely cool to play with and one we’ll be making many times in the future. 

Make glittery dough using salt dough
Note~ This post contains affiliate links. 


Ingredients needed for Glitter Salt Dough:

Salt Dough (mix up 1 cup of salt, 1 cup of flour, and 1/2 cup water.)
glitter glue (ours was not the washable version)
That’s it!

 

Play dough recipe using salt dough and glue
When we made our glitter dough, we were crafting our Kissing Hand charm and were playing with the extra dough.  Baby Girl saw a bottle of glitter glue sitting nearby and decided to decorate her dough.  It was a beautiful, glittery, goopy decoration 😉
We decided to mix the whole glittery mess into the dough and glitter glue salt dough was born!

More quick ideas for sensory play that you will love:Sensory Paint Play 

Valentine’s Day Goop Painting 

Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin 

Outdoor Dandelion Messy Water Play 

Water Bin Play Series 

Relaxing Lavender Water Bin

With the glue added into the dough, it was much more sticky.  Such a great sensory experience to manipulate that sticky dough!  We needed to add a bit more flour to take away the sticky factor.  How much you add depends on how much dough you’ve got and how much glitter glue you add in.   Looking for more ways to add sensory experiences to everyday play? Try all of these sensory activities.
Salt dough with added glitter glue makes a great fine motor activity for kids.

 Playing with this glittery dough was so much fun!  Let us know if you mix up a batch. 
Try these creative play dough recipes:
             This sensory play dough recipe is so cool! Its made with Pixy Stix candy and smells amazing. The best part is freezing the dough-its such a great fine motor strengthening activity and great for proprioceptive input to the hands.


                   Crayon Play Dough

                                                     Body Wash Play Dough


                                          Proprioception Marshmallow Dough
                                                                      Frozen Play Dough

Beans and Bugs Simple Sensory Bin

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Simple sensory bins are fun to throw together in a few minutes.  Sometimes, all it takes to occupy the kids in a sensory learning activity is just two items that you can find around the house or in the toy bin.  We started a Simple Sensory Bin series a few weeks ago, making sensory bins with just two items.  We’re working our way through the alphabet with simple sensory activities.  Of course we’re not going alphabetically…that would make too much sense 🙂  Instead, we’re just playing our way around the alphabet.  Today, we bring you B is for Beans and Bugs!


Create imagination play sensory fun with beans and bugs

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“B” themed sensory bin

We gathered up just two items for this easy sensory bin. 
dry black beans
bugs

 shallow tray

Easy sensory play doesn't require more than a few items found around the home.

How easy is this sensory bin?  It doesn’t get much easier to throw together.  Open a bag of dried beans.  Scatter bugs around.  Play.

Explore ants, spiders, and beatles with a sensory activity

We love our Melissa and Doug bugs.  The colors of these little guys are so vibrant and stand out great against the black of the beans.

B is for beans and bugs. Sensory bin for kids

We played with this bug sensory bin for such a long time.  And the pretend play…we had bugs digging in “dirt”, bugs making other buggy friends, and bugs building “dirt houses”.

These three buggy friends were talking and having a party.

Sensory play has never been so easy.  We put these black beans away for another day.  And maybe dinner. 😉
Simple sensory bin play idea with Beans and Bugs.
  

What simple sensory ideas will be next in our series?  Stay tuned for easy ideas coming this way soon!

S is for sticks and stones
Check out our Sensory Bins and Sensory Tables Pinterest board

Circus Sensory Bin

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A while back, we were on a bit of a Circus Theme in our pretend play.  We had a bunch of fun with our circus party ideas and read a bunch of circus books.  We did this sensory bin around that time, but are just now getting the chance to blog about it.  This was such an easy sensory activity to throw together that we will definitely be playing this again.

Creative and sensory play for kids with an easy circus theme.

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Create a circus themed sensory bin using popcorn!

To create an easy Circus Sensory Bin, you will need:


circus train pieces

Mini Animals

popcorn


plastic tray

Use circus train and circus animals in an easy sensory bin

I started by popping some corn.  And only ate a few handfuls.  Pop extra.  Snacks are good.

I put some popped and un popped corn onto a plastic tray.  Then, simply added our train set and animals.  The scene was set for imagination and pretend fun!

Kids will love to pretend with mini animals.

The animals in the different textures was such a fun way to explore animal names, animal sounds, and all in an easy sensory bin.

Kids will love to pretend and play while learning animal names and noises.

Baby Girl (age 2) loved this pretend play so much!  Not only did we have a blast playing and learning, she got a snack too!  Bonus!

Of course, the animals needed feeding, too.

We loaded up the train with popcorn and made deliveries.  Such a fun way to play away an afternoon.

This might be the perfect accompaniment to our circus tent craft.  Sensory play, craft, and snack…sounds like the perfect afternoon with the kids to me!

Note:  Like all of our activities on sugaraunts.com, we encourage playing alongside your kids and in a supervised manner.  Some crafts and activities may present a dangerous situation for children who like to put things into their mouths.  Please monitor your child with this and any activity you see on our website.  Popcorn will present as a choking hazard for small children.  Please use your best judgment if you decide to do this activity with your kids.

You may be interested in our Circus Crafts and Activities Pinterest board for more circus ideas.

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Recipes for Sensory Play

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  We love all things Sensory Play.  So when we went through the link ups from last month’s Share It Saturday linky party, we were drawn to the sensory activities.  Even better than sensory play with the kids, is a material that needs to be mixed, baked, whipped, or stirred.  Part of the sensory play experience is creating the concoction from scratch with the kids.  It’s a great way to get the kids involved in the sensory play set up and learning with measurements, direction following, and sequencing.  These recipes are fun ways to explore the senses and create with recipes for sensory play!

Recipes for Sensory Play

Recipes for play dough, paint, slime, cloud dough and more

Liquid Driveway Chalk is a fun way to explore the senses while creating. 

Cherry Glitter Paint from Mini Monets and Mommies

Colored Sand 

Cake and Ice Cream Play Dough from Dabbling Mama

Kool Aid Puffy Paint 

Marshmallow Paint from Fantastic Fun and Learning

Homemade Play Dough Recipes from Crystal & Co.

Fizzing Sidewalk Paint from Kids Activity Blog

Textured Paint 

Gold Slime from Fun-A-Day

Coconut Cloud Day from Fun-A-Day

Baking Soda Dough 

Sensory Play with kid-tested recipes for sand, puffy paint, soda dough and more.

Monochromatic Water Bin Color Play

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We love playing all kinds of learning through water on the water table.  We’ve played lots of other materials too…sand, nature, and even snow have made their way into our water table.  Recently, we explored a single color with water play in the water table.  Monochromatic learning  through water play is such a great summer play activity, but could be carried over to year round with a little mess-proofing indoors. 
This activity is part of the All Things Kids blogger’s monthly series.  This month we’re talking about Learning with Water Play.  You can see all of the great ideas from the All Things Kids bloggers by checking out the series homepage on All Things Kids.


Learning with Color

Explore a single color in the water bin with this learning through water play activity for kids.

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Monochromatic Water Bin Play

We started with our sand and water table
and filled both sides with water.  We added a little bit of grape scented bubbles
for a fun scent and foamy sensory play on one side of the water table.  I blew up a bunch of purple water balloons and threw those in the water table.  (HINT: Blowing up water balloons can be a beast!  We have a little hand air pump that came from some toy and made it much easier to blow up the water balloons!) You could use any size balloons for this activity, but I wanted small size for our transferring part of the fun. 

I gave the kids a little plastic shovel from our sandbox and showed the kids how to transfer the balloons from side to side in the water table.


It was fun to try to catch the balloons as they scooted around on the water surface.  Transferring the balloons with a shovel is a great way to work on eye-hand coordination while encouraging bilateral hand coordination and crossing midline.  Transferring from left to right is great for pre-readers, too.  Kids need to scan from left to right across the page as they read and working on this skill in pre-readers is a great beginner activity.

We had so much fun talking about the different shades of purple and the term “monochromatic” as we pointed out the different shades.  Our learning with water activity was a great way to spend a hot summer afternoon. 
You may be interested in some of the products that we love and used in this post’s activity:

S Themed Sensory Bin: sticks, sand, stones

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We’ve been on a bit of a sensory bin kick lately.  Summer weather permits tons of outside play and the water bin is the way to go during hot sunny days.  This sensory bin is one in a series that we’ve been working on and will continue to add to over a (probably) loooong time. 



ABC’s of Sensory Bins

 
We’re hoping to hit all of the letters of the alphabet in our ABC’s of Sensory Bins series.  Each sensory bin is an easy and fun way to play with the kids while focusing on one letter at a time. 
Being a sensory bin, it’s a great way to explore textures, language, and now letters too as we play.  Each sensory bin in our series will contain only 2-3 ingredients (simple!) and begin with the same letter. 
We’re not going through the alphabet in sequential order, but hopping around.  Each bin will eventually be added to a giant list of the ABC’s of sensory bins.  Come along and play with us.  We’re ready to have some sensory bin fun!
"S" themed sensory bin using basic items.

 


S themed sensory bin

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We LOVE our Sand and Water Table.  We’ve used it in SO many water table activities.  This one was thrown together in a matter of minutes since we still had sand in the water table at the time.  Both sections of the water table were filled with sand and ready for a “S” themed play.
Easy sensory bin with sticks, stones, and sand
We started with a bin full of sand and went on a hunt through the yard for some nice sized sticks. 
Some were a little too big and needed to be snapped to fit little hands.  Little Guy liked to help with the snapping. 
The old snapping the twigs over the knee trick was a huge hit and we had a pretty big pile of snapped twigs thanks to his handy work!
A couple of handfuls of river rock to the bin and we were ready for simple sensory bin play!
"S" sensory bin for kids with simple items for basic play.

Imagination Play in a Sensory Bin

Sand, sticks, and stones made up an easy (SIMPLE) sensory bin ready for imagination and play.  We built paths with the stones, bridges and huts with the sticks, and tunnels through the sand.
Simple "S" sensory bin for pretend play and imagination
Little Guy made a few traps for bad guys.
…And had to add in his dinosaurs for more pretend play fun!
This "S" themed sensory bin uses basic items for pretend play and imagination.

We had a blast with our first simple sensory bin.  Here’s to hoping we get this series up and running with loads of new sensory bins for you to enjoy too!  Looking for more sensory bin fun?  Try one of these ideas:

Snowy Farm Sensory Bin
Multi-Age Letter Learning Sensory Bin
Rainbow Sensory Bins
 You may want to see more of our Sensory Bins here.

Circus Preschool Toddler Theme Summer Camp at Home

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We’re joining up with the awesome bloggers in the All Things Kids community to bring your creative and fun ideas to get your summer off to a great start.  So, the kids are out of school and ready for some fun.  The running around in the sprinkler and riding bikes are perfect to start off a summer of freedom.  But, what happens when the first “I’m bored” starts?  We’ve got you covered on ideas to keep the kids moving, learning, and creating this summer.  Each of us All Things Kids bloggers are bringing you ideas for themed activities.  These would be perfect too in place of a summer camp or vacation bible school and just do an at-home summer camp with the kids.  Why not invite a few friends over and start your own backyard summer camp for the kids? 

Backyard Summer Camp

It’s that simple to create a neighborhood summer camp!  Pull up the ideas from the all things kids bloggers and you’ve got 7 weeks of themes covered for a summer of camp fun.  We’ve found the best crafts, activities, snacks, and more all based on each week’s theme.  I’m ready for a backyard summer!
Check out all of the summer camp ideas: Robots, Bugs  Around the World , Animals, Ocean and Beach, Nature, and today’s post by us…Circus!

We’re scouring the net for the best and most creative ways to make your own Circus themed Summer Camp for preschoolers and toddlers.  We’ve got circus crafts, circus snacks, circus fine motor and gross motor activities to get the summer off to great start. 


Circus Theme Crafts

The kids will love a few circus crafts.  These lion, tiger, and monkey masks (Danya Banya) will keep the kids occupied and pretending. Or try this elephant mask craft (East Coast Mommy) for more pretend play.  For more circus animal crafts, try this activity from Inspired Treehouse.  

Kids will love making a craft a day at your backyard camp.  Make this elephant mask (Mamas Like Me) and they can wear it throughout the week. Children can work on so many important developmental areas while developing their scissor skills.  If painting is more your thing, this lion craft (Sassy Dealz) is a super cute circus animal to make.   Need a few more crafts to keep the kids busy with your circus theme?  I love these circus clown costumes (KangarooBoo blog) made with party hats and paper plates.

We loved making our circus tent craft.  This trapeze artist craft (Boy Mama Teacher Mama) is equally cute! A handprint zoo (House of Burke) would be a great memento to remember your week of circus fun.


Circus Theme Snacks

A backyard summer camp or themed learning unit definitely needs snacks to keep little ones going and energy levels high.  Here’s a few circus themed ideas for snack time:
  • Goldfish in a bag (You won goldfish!)
  • animal crackers
  • popcorn
  • Sandwiches cut into fun circus shapes with circus cookie cutters (and then reuse those cookie cutters for stamp art painting later in the week!)


    • A    dd these things to a little peanut butter (or other nut butter) for some protein.


Circus Theme Gross Motor Backyard Activities

I know a few little ones who would LOVE this water gun game (Driven By Décor).  Use a few ping pong balls and a squirt gun for an easy (and summer-ific) carnival game. Inspired Treehouse put together put together three gross motor circus activities.  A ball toss game would be easy to set up with a few bins and some bean bags or balls. 


Circus Theme Sensory Activities

The kids (and moms) will get a kick out of a fun circus sensory activity.  How cool is this popcorn painting activity (Mess for Less)? We put together a few fun ideas for circus sensory bins in our circus party essentials post

 


Circus Theme Learning

Any circus unit or backyard camp needs circus books!  These are some of our favorites.

Liquid Chalk Recipe Driveway Painting

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We love sensory art and  play activities at my house.  We also love making our own DIY sensory play recipes for playtime and art. This Liquid Chalk recipe is just one of our favorite ones to make.  It is cheap and easy and my kids love it.  It can be a little messy but clean up is pretty easy. Liquid chalk is a fun way to spend time with the kids outside on a nice sunny day while engaging in some tactile sensory challenges.

These liquid chalks would be a great addition to a rubber duck painting activity too, and a great way for kids to explore tactile sense with creative art.
DIY Driveway Liquid Chalk Recipe

Liquid Chalk Recipe

I mixed up a batch of liquid chalk in a muffin tin.  I placed it on a tray and sat it outside for the kids.
The kids had foam brushes to paint with.  They painted the driveway and garage floor.
Liquid chalk is fun to explore sight and touch.  Creating art on the concrete is a fun change from paper inside.
Painting outside like this gets the kids up and moving around too.  I have so much fun painting with them, when they let me.  
This day we wanted to mix it up with the typical chalk painting we usually do.  I had seen a fun Fizzing Sidewalk Paint Recipe by Kids Activities Blog and had wanted to try it out.  Today seemed like as good a day as any.
After the kids had painted a while, I brought out spray bottles with vinegar in them.  I let the kids spray the chalk paint.  We watched to see if it would fizz?  A little added simple science too.
We got a little fizzing action but not a lot.  They kids still had a blast spraying the vinegar on the ground either way.  This was a hit at my house and we hope you can enjoy it too.
 This is a guest post by Jaime at Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails. Jaime is an everyday stay at home mom. She  has 3 boys ages 5 yr to 1 yr.  Jaime loves to find fun activities, crafts, recipes…. for us to do together. When she is not washing clothes and chasing the boys around she enjoys sharing our activities and crafts on her blog.